Purpose: To assure that students and parents maintain financial responsibility for the student’s meal account and that parents will be given adequate notice that money is owed to their account.
Scope: Nutrition staff and managers
Instructions: Child Nutrition employees are to serve every student a regular reimbursable meal regardless of the student’s meal account balance. The child nutrition employee will not discuss meal balances with students in any circumstance.
Students may be allowed to charge reimbursable school meals according to policy for our district as follows:
1. Meal charging for schools
Starting at a negative balance of 3 lunches, the Child Nutrition Cashier will send home a balance notification to the parents through an email out of the Primero Edge program. Students will continue to receive regular reimbursable meals on the menu. If no payment is received and the balance is a total of 5 lunches, the Cashier &/or Manager will attempt to make contact with the parent by phone informing them that payment needs to be made as soon as possible. The Child Nutrition employee will try the work phone, cell phone and home phone number attempting to at least leave a message. In addition, the child nutrition employee will send an Application for Educational Benefits to the household address on file.
If there is no response to the phone call and an additional 5 lunches have been added to the deficit, the Child Nutrition cashier &/or manager will inform the principal and possibly the social worker, and give her/him a printed list of names of students owing this amount. The school administration team will attempt to contact the parents by phone.
Students will continue to receive the regular reimbursable lunch per the daily menu during this collection process.
2. Meal Charging for Child Nutrition Employee Meals
All Child Nutrition employees and substitutes are entitled to 1 free meal, per shift, per day. Ala carte and pre-packaged items need to be purchased by the employee.