Sliced cucumber, penne bolognese, melted cheese, chocolate mousse. For the back-to-school menu, served on Thursday, September 5, 2024 to schoolchildren in Luynes, the school catering service has pulled out all the stops. For this “festive meal”, families will have paid €5.84 for a kindergarten student, and €5.94 for a primary school child. The same unit price as every day of the week, since the start of the 2024 school year. Hit by two successive increases, in 2023 and 2024, the price of the canteen at the public school in Luynes is now one of the highest in the department, especially since it does not offer decreasing prices based on the family coefficient, as is the case in many municipalities. Mobilized to lower these prices that they consider “huge”parents of students oppose an inflexible municipality.
Meals from 70 cents
“We notice more and more parents in front of the school who come to pick up their children, or who leave them less at daycare in the evening to compensate”says Élodie Rattier, president of the parents’ association Cartable et sac’ado. The association’s mobilization hardened when, before the summer, it supported a family whose child had been excluded from the canteen for non-payment. “Even for households where both parents work, with several children, it becomes significant.”adds Charlotte Maume, one of the mothers of the students involved. A prize “which is not justified for industrial meals”adds another mother who prefers to remain anonymous.
The municipality of Luynes is not the only one, far from it, to have revised its school meal prices upwards over the last two years. Those of Sorigny increased by 10% in January, those of Pernay by 10.78% this school year, those of La Membrolle-sur-Choisille by 20%. Among the reasons given to justify these increases, the increase in the price of foodstuffs and charges, the obligation to integrate local and organic products into meals, passed on internally or by service providers. Despite these significant increases, the price of the meal remains well below the €5.94 practiced in Luynes.
In Indre-et-Loire, school catering prices vary from one municipality to another, as do the services offered: central kitchen, delivery of industrial meals, etc.
© NR archive photo
Rates freely set by the municipality
In Indre-et-Loire, canteen prices are as varied as the law allows – they are freely set by the municipality, which assumes its share of financing. Some opt for a single price, for a generally contained amount, others offer progressive prices, correlated to the family quotient, or to the number of children in the same family. In Tours, the price per meal varies between €0.70 and €5.20 depending on the family quotient, for an “average” price of €3.04. In Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, the price is single, set at €3.70. In Esvres, it is €4.24, with a 30% reduction for the 3e child, and even 50% from the 4the child. More and more municipalities in the department are adopting social pricing and offering, for the most modest families, meals at €1, or even less, such as Tours, Chinon, Saint-Pierre-des-Corps or, since this school year, Château-Renault.
“It’s a political choice”
“A meal for €6, in a town like ours, is not even conceivable”immediately asks Brigitte Dupuis, the mayor of Château-Renault. Thanks to the state scheme “Canteen for €1”, the municipality was able to reduce the price per meal from €3.10 for everyone to a range between €0.95 and €2.60. “For some children in the community, the canteen is the only full meal of the day”notes the mayor of this disadvantaged rural community, regularly confronted with families who cannot pay their bills, or who no longer send their children to the canteen because of the price. “It is a political choice, which seemed necessary to me, especially in a tense climate for families”she assumes.
A budgetary choice which is not that of the mayor of Luynes, Bertrand Ritouret. “We must bear in mind that the canteen prices do not correspond to the reality of the cost borne by the Cityhe asks as a preamble. Behind the rates charged, there is an accounting reality: to maintain the service, it must be financed. Either by increasing taxes, or by maintaining a rate that follows the increase in costs. Opposed to the implementation of a pricing by tranche, a mechanism that he considers “cumbersome to set up and intrusive”the elected official assures “never leave families in difficulty” thanks to the intervention of the municipal social action center (CCAS). And to put into perspective the cost of school meals in the “mayor’s basket”: “For us, the canteen represents a deficit of €200,000: it is the equivalent of a piece of road. In the municipalities, these are choices that we make.” Between pothole and cucumber vinaigrette.
In middle school, a 13% increase that causes controversy
This 2024 school year, canteen prices will increase by 13% in middle schools in Indre-et-Loire, raising the price per meal from €3.32 to €3.75.
During the departmental council meeting which adopted this increase last June, the vice-president in charge of colleges, Judicaël Osmond, justified this increase by the rise in the cost of foodstuffs and the “requirements of the Egalim law”, which imposes a share of local and organic products in collective catering.
The opposition considered this 13% increase to be “unfair” for families, and called, at the very least, for it to be staggered. Elected officials also argued for progressive pricing based on family income.
Nadège Arnault, the president of the Department, said she was ready to work on this proposal.
