Schools

Central, Berkeley School Districts Partner In School Lunch Payment Program

Parents will soon be able to update student account balances with a debit or credit card

 

Parents of Central Regional school district students will soon have another way to pay for their children's school lunches instead of shelling out cash or writing a check.

District officials are partnering with the Berkeley Township school district and Bank of America to set up a program that allows parents to to pay for school lunches with debit or credit cards.

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Schools Business Administrator Kevin O'Shea stressed that the program is not mandatory and parents can continue to pay cash or by check if they wish.

"This is just another option for the parents," he said today.

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Parents who use the program will be charged a $2 transaction fee by Bank of America every time they use the service,  O'Shea said.

"If we find that's too much, we will adjust that," he said. "We just want to make it more of a paperless environment."

The new system will allow parents to check on their children's lunch account balances online.

O'Shea stressed that the program is not mandatory and parents can continue to pay cash or by check if they wish.

Every student in the district already has a lunch account and a student identification card. When they go to pay for their lunch, they punch in their code and the price is subtracted from their existing balance, O'Shea said.

If the student's lunch account balance dips below zero, the student gets one more free lunch - the sandwich of the day - and a letter is sent home to the student's parents, he said.

"They will always get a meal," O'Shea said. "We are not going to send a kid home starving."

Central Regional officials privatized the food service program several years ago and contracted with Chartwells to provide the meals and employees. A hot lunch sells for $2.75. There are also a number of a la carte items for sale.


"They came in in 2009 and put in a lot of new equipment," O'Shea said. "The food service is running very well."

School officials hope to have the new program and up running sometime in March, he said.

"I want to give credit to the Berkeley school district," O'Shea said. "They were already in the works with this. I contacted them."


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