School system pushing pre-paid meals

Staff Reports

CENTRE — School system officials are encouraging parents to take advantage of a relatively new accounting system that makes paying for their child's lunch a piece of cake.

The Cherokee County Schools Child Nutrition Program is offering the pre-paid accounts for school meals, both lunch and breakfast, to all 4,200 children in the system. Payments received by nutrition managers at each school will be stored in a computer system kept alongside the cash register in school cafeteria lines. When kids come through the line, they punch in a four-digit code to pay for their items with money stored in their accounts.

“It's a really good convenience for families, in that they can pay by the week, month, or even by the entire year,” said Child Nutrition Director Linda Prater. “They can pre-pay for breakfast and lunch, or just lunch. It works as a checking account.”

Prater said lunchroom prices will hold steady at 50 cents for breakfast and $1.50 for lunch when the 2007-08 school year begins Aug. 9. Reduced meal costs for low-income families are 30 cents and 90 cents, respectively. Some students may be eligible for meals at no cost.

Prater said the school system began offering pre-paid meals about three years ago as a convenience to parents. She admitted the program can be labor-intensive for managers, but believes students and parents benefit greatly.

“It's a convenience to the lunchroom staff, too, because the person running the register doesn't have to take time to make change for students paying for a meal with cash,” she said. “It makes things move a lot quicker when you're serving around 66,000 meals a month.”

Prater said that currently only around 25 percent of students take advantage the pre-pay system, but she hopes to see that number rise soon.

“If we had our preference we'd want to have all our students pre-pay,” she said. “But the number is going up every year.”

Child Nutrition Program Manager Lisa Weaver, who manages the pre-pay accounts at Cedar Bluff School, said the program is great for students.

“It's really convenient, especially for the younger students,” she said. “They can just get their food, punch in their number and go.”

Prater said lunch menu planning has come a long way in recent years. She said schools now offer fresh fruits and vegetables, and encourages students to take five different food items at lunchtime. She said every lunchroom in the system also offers a salad bar and a hot bar featuring a choice of entrees. New items such as spinach and wild rice have been added to the menu this year.

Prater said each school's menu is available on the Cherokee County Board of Education website at www.cherokeek12.org.

In addition to choosing from the daily menu items, students are allowed to purchase health foods such as low-fat ice cream, fruit roll-ups, sugar-free drinks and flavored bottled waters. Students in grades 6-12 are permitted to purchase iced tea for an additional 50 cents.

Those items can also be purchased using the pre-pay accounts, Prater said.

Parents who wish to take advantage of the pre-pay program should enclose cash, checks or money orders (the minimum payment is $20) in an envelope marked “lunchroom manager” and send it to school with their child. The outside of the envelope should also contain the child's name and grade, and note the amount of the payment inside.

Prater said anyone with questions about the program is welcome to contact her at 256-927-3322.