The recent situation at an elementary school in Salt Lake City has opened up a lot of questions about what should or should not be considered when a student’s lunch account has been exhausted or has a large negative balance.
While the Salt Lake City students were still provided milk and a piece of fruit, how it was handled by actually providing the lunches and allegedly then snatching them and disposing of them was probably not something anyone would have considered a good idea.
What can we do? I have seen a district with over $100,000 in delinquent accounts. Running the school and the cafeteria is a business venture, so how could a school survive with such a business model?
Although the school did say that parents had been notified, some parents insist they never received notification. It sounds as if telephone calls were made. In the wired world we live in, there certainly should be a viable way to notify parents to alleviate the pressure this can cause not only for the school’s budget, but the embarrassment to the students.
There has to be some meeting of the minds here. Maybe offering to have a credit card on file for emergency funding when the balance gets below a certain level; a text or email giving parents a few days to react; or perhaps a specific dollar amount held in arrears to draw from until parents are notified.
What can we think of that would create a more positive result for the school, its students and their parents?
Please continue the discussion by leaving your comments below.
Kern Halls, School Foodservice Consultant and Chief Innovator of Ingenious Culinary Concepts, turns empty dining halls into gold mines of student activity! By seeking out and combining just the right “ingredients” to accomplish what many call impossible: Halls gets students to “want” to dine in your cafeterias!
For his FREE report, outlining Marketing Tips to help you generate additional revenue TODAY! Click here to download!
