40 years ago: Food supplies low, prices high at Lawrence school lunch program

From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Aug. 18, 1973:

Rising food prices and food shortages were almost certainly going to result in a financial squeeze for the school lunch program at U.S.D. 497. School lunches were to remain at 40 cents for the beginning of the school year, but within a month they would probably be raised to 50 cents, according to officials. Ina Clagg, director of the district’s food service, said that meat and canned fruits and vegetables were in short supply and that the prices on milk and fresh food items had increased considerably. Most other area schools had already raised their lunch prices by five to 10 cents to keep up with price increases, Clagg said. Menus and grocery orders for the first three weeks of school, originally drafted last spring, were now being altered because of the food situation. “Whatever is available will determine what the menus will be,” Clagg explained. The district usually accepted bids and began purchasing canned food items in the previous spring, “but this year venders were not willing to bid that far ahead,” Clagg said. The district had been assured by its meat supplier, Harwood’s Wholesale Meat, that if fresh beef were available, the schools would be the first to be supplied. A federal program had supplied most of the chicken and turkey served in the past, but chickens were going to be rare this year, although Clagg said she expected to receive some turkey. She added that the district had carried over some supplies from the spring, including peanut butter, a three-week supply of flour, some dry milk, and powdered eggs.