The Portsmouth School Nutrition Program(PSNP) is a self-supporting department that must function as a fiscally responsible business (concerned with food and labor costs) but at the same time fulfill our primary role of feeding our kids healthy choices at a reasonable price. To be truly successful, a child nutrition operation must consider itself an integral part of the educational process every school day. Such an operation seeks and enjoys the support of its School Board, administrators, and educators, resulting in policies that encourage students to choose full school meals in their school cafeterias, rather than simply emphasizing overall "sales." If our only goal is to bulk up sales, our task is vastly simplified -- we can sell the same foods that kids can find at any convenience store or fast food restaurant and make money. Only support from the administrators and members of the board can help a program resist the temptation to emphasize less healthy but more profitable a la carte products at the expense of balanced meals. Our program is committed to becoming and remaining both fiscally sound and supportive of good learning.

To get a better understanding of the fiscal responsibilities of the PSNP let's take a closer look at an average cost of an elementary school lunch.

I'd like you to notice something about these totals: we actually make significantly less money from paid lunches than from free and reduced-priced meals. This reflects our desire to keep meals reasonably priced for paying students, but it also indicates that our paid prices are actually below our cost-per-meal. Only a local food and nutrition service like ours, which is concerned with student performance rather than profit, can justify this kind of pricing structure. We believe our community deserves the lowest possible prices from our service, and THAT'S what we deliver. Food and labor costs, food preparation supplies, equipment, repairs, and other miscellaneous costs account for the program's expenses.

In all of our menu planning, we emphasize variety, moderation, choice, and context -- that is, we consider each food item and each meal in the context of an entire week's menus, rather than in isolation. We aim to make sure that, taken together; each week's menu choices for your students conform to dietary goals. Based on our participation figures, our hard work is paying off. The number of paying kids eating breakfast and lunch has climbed steadily over the years. Last year we served 1070 lunches and 253 breakfasts daily. We now average 1335 meals daily, which equals 240,300 student meals in the course of the school year. Clearly, we're reaching - and satisfying - more customers all the time!

Yours truly,
Patricia Laska
School Nutrition Director - Portsmouth School Department

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