Trade watermelon for a prune?

In Bensalem, the soaring cost of food means that grilled cheese will be harder to find in the school lunch line.

In Washington Township, it translates to iceberg lettuce instead of pricier romaine, and more applications for free and reduced-price lunches.

And in Coatesville, it may mean fewer kaiser rolls and more white bread.

Across the region and the country, higher food prices are raising school lunch prices and squeezing some variety out of what the government sells to districts. And it's forcing school nutrition directors to get creative about what to serve.

Gloucester County's 9,000-student Washington Township district will raise prices as much as 50 cents for some meals - high school lunches are now $3.25 - and it will still be tough to make ends meet, said Ginny Bowden, director of food and nutrition.

Last school year, milk costs went up 17 percent, rice and pasta 13 percent, cheese 15 percent, and bread 12 percent, according to the School Nutrition Association.

"Every single thing has gone up significantly," Bowden said. "It's a crunch for us, and we're at the maximum that we can charge."

School lunch programs are expected to be financially self-sufficient, relying on sales and government subsidies, not taxpayer money. Meals must meet federal nutrition standards, and what districts can charge is capped.

The average cost to prepare a school lunch is about $3, but the federal government reimburses districts on average $2.57 per free lunch, $2.17 per reduced-price lunch, and 23 cents per paid meal, up 10 cents from last year.

In Washington Township, the economic crunch has also hit by increasing applications for free and reduced-price lunchs, Bowden said.

She is coping by raising prices across the board, shopping for deals, and pulling menu items when they're just too expensive.

"We're not going to buy romaine lettuce or leaf lettuce for a little while," Bowden said. "We're going to have to stick to plain old iceberg for a while."

Polly Welch, food-service coordinator for Bensalem schools, used to serve grapes and watermelons once a week to her 6,000 students. Now it's once a month. She has picked a cheaper brand of pizza to save a few bucks, and has taken grilled cheese off the elementary school menu.

"American cheese got pretty expensive," Welch said.

You'll also see fewer popular tuna hoagies in the middle and high school cafeterias. Bensalem prices are up 50 cents this year, a jump that Welch said she had never seen.

She is also using more government commodities, foods available to schools based on the number of meals served. Now she plans her menus around what she can get cheaply and then figures out how to jazz it up.

So prunes will show up on Bensalem menus. So will turkey ham.

"What kid wants to eat prunes?" Welch said. "With the turkey ham, you put it on a sandwich, add more lettuce, cheese and tomato to make it a little more edible."

Welch worries that higher prices will force more parents to swear off school meals.

"If you have a couple of children, you maybe can't afford to have them buy the few times a week they used to," she said.

Anne Heil, a mother of Bensalem High students, said rising prices reinforced her decision to pack lunches this year.

"I have two kids, and you double the cost every week? Now it's $3 a day, so no way," Heil said.

As a treat, her kids will be permitted to buy lunch on Friday pizza days, she said.

In recent years, federal and state officials have pushed schools to offer healthier choices, including more fresh fruits and vegetables.

Radnor High School food-service coordinator Russell Dilkes said the trend, though a welcome one, put a crimp in his budget.

"We're serving things that require a little bit more labor. They're a little bit more costly," he said, pointing to fresh fruits that must be cut by hand and chef's specials made from scratch rather than defrosted and warmed up.

Dilkes varies his menus according to what's available seasonally - pulling tomatoes when they skyrocket and roasting canned corn in the winter as a topping for the school's popular salad bar.

Like most districts, Radnor, which also is raising lunch prices for its 3,500 students, locks in prices for its staples - flour, ground meat, canned goods - at the beginning of the year. But vendors squeezed by fuel costs are passing them along as surcharges for delivery.

Some districts have avoided raising prices. Philadelphia, where 56 percent of the 167,000 students receive free or reduced-price lunches, not only kept prices steady but expanded breakfast to every school. The district locked most vendors in to a five-year contract four years ago.

Coatesville food-service supervisor Erin Robinson said the department was dipping into its surplus to keep prices from creeping up, but cutting costs where it could.

"We're looking at what type of bread we're using and maybe replacing it with something less expensive," she said. "Maybe we'll use white bread instead of kaiser rolls."

Coatesville is also contending with fewer choices of government foods. The federal government lists commodity foods, but states control what is available.

This month, "it was a rather small offering. There were a few fruits, but there wasn't any cheese on it," Robinson said. The list, state officials said, can fluctuate with the marketplace.

That has been frustrating for Chuck Damiani, director of food service for the Haverford Township schools, where lunch prices are going up for the first time in years. He had to buy cheese on the open market for the first time ever.

He's coping by "chasing all the deals" - accepting a shipment of chicken that a restaurant ordered but couldn't use, for instance, or buying in bulk through a consortium and paying to store what he can't use immediately.

So far Damiani has staved off cutting expensive items from the menu.

"We're trying not to compromise there at all," he said.

Eileen Bellew, director of food services for the Marple-Newtown district and active in the School Nutrition Association of Pennsylvania, increased lunch prices, but is also listening to students who said they didn't like meat loaf and pork patties.

"They say they would like lobster and shrimp on the menu, but unfortunately we can't accommodate them," Bellew said.

Even with the price hikes, school lunch is still a great deal, she said. Every meal includes a hot or cold entree, a grain, a fruit, a vegetable, and a milk choice.

"We're still low," Bellew said. "Where can you get lunch for $2.60?"