LONDONDERRY, N.H. – Federal officials have backed off threats to impose a host of regulations on a New Hampshire high school for opting out of the National School Lunch Program.

Londonderry High School dropped out of the National School Lunch Program last year to avoid federal regulations championed by first lady Michelle Obama that limit calories, fat, sodium, sugar, whole grains and other aspects of school food.

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School officials said the move was necessary to serve students sufficient portions and provide meals students will actually buy and eat, instead of government-mandated lunches that drove them away from the cafeteria.

The decision also meant the district forfeited federal subsidies that come with the National School Lunch Program, but officials increased lunch prices and introduced new foods that made up the difference, and then some, the Union Leader reports.

“About 33 percent of students participated in the school lunch program this September, up from 29 percent last September when the school was still part of the federal program,” according to the news site.

Not only did the changes pull the district’s school food program from five-figure losses last year, it’s now turning a profit, illustrating that school food departments not only survive without the federal lunch program, they thrive.

The success, however, triggered a threat from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reclassify the high school as a processing facility, since foods sent to schools that still remain in the National School Lunch Program are prepared at the high school. The change in status would have triggered a cascade of federal regulations school officials said would be impossible to comply with, and would have necessitated the hire of at least one new school employee.

“To a degree, it feels to us like it’s vindictive, because we made a move to do something that we felt was appropriate for us,” superintendent Nathan Greenberg told school board members in late October.

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“It’s not ‘it feels vindictive,’” board vice chairman John Laferriere added, according to the Union Leader. “It is vindictive.”

The government threat prompted district officials to reach out to the New Hampshire Department of Administrative Services, as well as U.S. Sens. Kelly Ayotte and Jeanne Shaheen. Ayotte wrote a letter to the USDA requesting an exemption for Londonderry High School from processing plant regulations, the Eagle Tribune reports.

The political pressure apparently worked.

Greenberg told the news site the high school will not be classified as a processing plant, but instead a USDA sub-distributor, which comes with far fewer requirements.

“The amount of inventory control that they wanted us to do” (under the processing plant distinction) would have been problematic, district business administrator Peter Curro said. “I’m not sure we could ever be 100 percent compliant with them.”

Ayotte said she thinks the USDA did the right thing by relenting in its attack on the school, but expressed concerns that problems with the National School Lunch Program’s Michelle Obama-inspired regulations continue to choke out local control over school food decisions.

“I am confident that local school districts in New Hampshire have the ability to both responsibly manage taxpayer dollars and implement proper nutrition guidelines for their students,” she said.

Shaheen echoed Ayotte.

“I’m very pleased that this new agreement allows the Londonderry School District to continue providing meals for its students without a host of unnecessary new rules,” Shaheen said.

Across the country, more than 1.4 million students have dropped out of the National School Lunch Program since the first lady’s school food restrictions went into effect. At the same time, school food waste increased by an estimated $1 billion annually, mostly tied to a requirement that all students take a fruit or vegetable whether they eat it or not.

School lunches at Londonderry High School, though, have improved greatly since last year, Greenberg told the Eagle Tribune.

“At this point, we deem it a great success,” he said.