No Such Thing as a Free Lunch: "Convenience" Fees Accompany School Lunches

School lunch payments will no longer be made through CommunityPass and it could cost parents–that is, if they choose to pay for the convenience.

The district sent out an e-mail to parents last week that it will now be using company RevTrak for processing activity fees and school lunches online. A $3.50 "convenience" charge will be applied to all transactions for making an online payment, a departure from the previous Community Pass system, which levied no such charges onto parents (the district absorbed the cost).

"It is a module of our student management system and allows us to  track payments per student," said Superintendent Dr. Daniel Fishbein of the new system. "We will also be implementing a point of service payment system in our cafeterias [both middle schools and the high school]," he said.

High school and middle school students can choose their lunch and have the family Food Service account debited, while parents can monitor those food choices online. Additionally, parents of elementary school students can pre-order lunches through a menu selection in RevTrak. That lunch is automatically debited when the child receives the lunch, according to the district e-mail.

Activity fee charges and meal fees must be paid separately, according to the district e-mail. However, said Fishbein, that may change. "That is an issue we are attempting to work out with the software company."

Under the new software system, families will have a single account to cover all students in the household, so if a child orders lunch at school, there will be no cash required when he/she purchases it, according to the e-mail. 

But given that separate transactions result in "convenience fees," families with multiple children could rack up significant fees over the course of the school year. Officials say they're working with RevTrak to place controls on the amount of transaction fees they could be hit with.

Of course, parents can opt out by paying check, thus avoiding the individual $3.50 fees. School officials say no one is forced to pay convenience fees within the system, which is fully integrated into Skyward's "Family Access".

But the software change will lead to total district savings and amounts to better fiscal policy, according to administrators.

"This is really a processing fee for the company doing the banking. This fee was passed on to the district in the past," the superintendent said.

Fishbein said between an annual subscription fee and merchant fees, the cost is the district had been spending was over $15,000. With the merchant fees (over $10,000) passed onto parents, officials say it's cheaper over the long haul for everyone. The district does not bring in revenue from the $3.50 fee.

Laurie Goodman, former school board member, gave a mixed review to the transition. Although she found the way it was communicated clumsy, Goodman said on her blog it appeared a reasonable move.

"The reality is, now the cost of processing online transactions will be paid for by only those parents using the service, instead of being paid for by all taxpayers," she wrote. "This seems fair to me. I just think it wasn't explained well."