BoomBah+Brigade

Essential Question: How are we as students being effected by the economy?

Challenge: Are challenge is to attempt to lower the prices of food in the cafeteria because they keep going up every year.

Guiding Questions?
 * 1) Do the taxes of the school going up have anything to do with the prices of the food going up?
 * 2) Does the prices of gasoline increasing make the price of delivery increase? Would the price of delivery help increase the price of the food
 * 3) Are our parents effected by the economy and does that effect us?

Guiding Activities


 * 1) Survey people whether or not they believe that the prices for the food in the cafeteria is too high.
 * 2) [[image:Pie_Chart.png]]
 * 3) Interview the lunch supervisor of the cafeteria why the prices at lunch are on the rise.
 * 4) Why have the prices of the food gone up in the cafeteria? Are the prices of the food items when you buy them going up each year and does that then affect the food when you sell them to us?
 * 5) **All the food we sell and paper products we use in the cafeteria are purchased through a company contracted through Pomtonian. This means when I do the ordering it must be through only those purveyors. The pricing of an item comes directly from Pomptonian. The final price of an item is based on cost of an item, the labor expense and profit. As the price of an item we purchase increases then the final cost to the students will increase.**
 * 6) Would you think it would be reasonable to have the same food prices from year to year? Why?
 * 7) **It would not be reasonable to have the same prices year to year because the products purchased go up each year. If Pomptonian did not raise the price they would not be making a profit.**
 * 8) Do you find that less students are buying lunch with the rise of the prices?
 * 9) **Actually this year we have about the same total enrollment as last year. This year so far more students are purchasing lunch and snacks. Our sales have increased because of a variety of options and students putting money on their account.**
 * 10) Have you had to hire more kitchen staff and if you did did that also play a role in increasing the prices of the lunch food?
 * 11) **Right at this point we have not hired any extra staff. The students have added a salad bar through a grant they applied for. No extra staff was in the budget for the 2011-2012 school year. If next year an additional person would be needed it would be undetermined at this point if there would be a price increase on certain items.**
 * 12) Look up sources on the internet about the economy and prices of food increasing.
 * 1) Look up sources on the internet about the economy and prices of food increasing.

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/school-lunch-money-and-cold-cheese-sandwiches/

Economy Effecting School Lunches

The economy is at a low point and because of that many people are suffering, from parents, to people with no jobs, to kids coming out of college. A parent suffering from money also has an effect on their kids. Affording a school lunch is something not everyone can do. Not everyone has the money to buy food for their kids. So through the school lunch program they are offering cheese sandwiches. People saying giving kids who have no money cold lunches is cruel and unfair. Many kids who were interviews said that after eating cheese sandwiches for a while they got sick of it and said if they had to eat one more cheese sandwich they would throw up. The economy is affecting everyone over the world, including affecting the school lunch programs. Many products raise in price which make it harder for parents to pay for their kids lunches. The economy affects parents which also translates into affecting their kids,

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/education/20lunch.html

Obama signed a child nutrition bill that was meant to put healthier food in public schools. This changes was to make healthy options for those schools, and by bringing in these healthy options it also raised the prices for the foods. By raising the prices that the schools were forced to buy, that made the school raise the prices on other foods to help pay for the new foods they were forced to buy. The law suggests that prices should only go up by 10 cents a year, buy many schools had to raise their prices by more to make up the difference. The financial situations of many people make it hard to keep up with the raising prices of the lunches. Many officials say that the pricing system is all out of balance and that they are not earning enough money per meal to pay for ingredients, repairs, and equipment for the lunch room.

Solution/ Action

Our economy is playing a major role with things all around our country. One that stuck out to us was why was the price of cafeteria food going up while the economy was going down? The reason for this is because of a chain reaction. Their have been many ways this chain reaction affected prices of food in the cafeteria and food that you would buy at your local supermarket. It may start at the farms, something as small as the price rising on oil could affect the price of food going up by 10-20 cents. The farmer may have to charge supermarkets more to buy his products because he had to buy more expensive gas for his tractor. Then the supermarket would have to charge the people who buy their products more money, because it cost more money now to deliver these foods to the stores. Another way we saw why food prices were raised is because of government regulations. Government officials have signed documents that say that public school have to have healthy options for their students. The more ingredients and more help needed to make these foods also increases the prices. The reason the prices are rising is because of chain reactions in our economy. A big change in price of oil can affect everyone, from people making food lunches to people who just want to buy a gallon of milk. With our economy the way it is right now people are struggling to make enough to feed themselves and their family. The economy effects almost everyone, which is why people have to limit their spending and be more responsible when it comes to their financial situation.

Our school lunch prices have been raising every year since we got to pascack valley in 2009. We are all students that complained about the rising prices in lunch. We thought that they were only raising the prices for one reason, to make more money. Going into this we thought that we would be able to make a difference. The reason we thought this is because we really had no information or knowledge about the topic. After looking at articles and interviewing professionals on the situation we realized that this rise in school lunch prices is not just random. The rise in school lunch prices is based of what the people are charging our school to buy the ingredients. We went into this project believing that we could make a difference by attempting to lower the school prices, the truth is that we can't lower the prices. If the school lowered the prices for school lunches they would not be making any money so they would have to get money from some other sources to pay to buy ingredients and upgrades to the school cafeteria. The school lunches is something that has to shift with the economy and they will also be something we will have to deal with because we cant change the prices and still allow the school to make money.