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Cash Flow Problems? Parent Notification System Put to Use to Collect on Lunch Fees

McLean County School District, located near Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, enrolls more than 12,500 students and supports 21 school sites. Every month the district found itself burdened with hundreds of students carrying negative lunch balances. An innovative solution was required to address the cash flow situation.

So McLean County School District put its parent phone notification system to use in a unique way. A subscriber to the SchoolReach parent notification system, McLean County deployed SchoolReach’s EZ Lunch Balance, enabling administrators to deliver a pre-recorded message to parents regarding their students’ lunch account balances.

“We started using SchoolReach to cancel school for snow days,” said Michele Lemek assistant to the superintendent of McLean County Schools. “We loved the system so much that we began to use it to help with administrative duties because it was so easy to use and worked so seamlessly with our student database system.”

As with all SchoolReach services, EZ Lunch Balance is a “hosted” solution, meaning the product allowed McLean County to initiate calling without installing or managing costly hardware, software, or additional phone lines. The system seamlessly coordinates with the district’s own student database to pull phone numbers and communicate to parents.

Before McLean County started using EZ Lunch Balance, literally hundreds of families were behind on payments into their lunch accounts. Many parents had no idea that their children were purchasing additional à la carte items that cost more than what parents had budgeted for daily lunches. Even though the school district had mailed notices and sent e-mails, parents were slow to respond.

Once parents were immediately reminded by phone when their children’s lunch balances got low or fell below zero, the situation began to change. Today less than 20 students per month in the entire district, on average, have negative lunch account balances.

“Not only have we virtually eliminated our negative lunch balance problem, but we’ve also saved more time and money by eliminating all the notices that we were mailing and sending home. We use SchoolReach for pretty much everything now,” said Lemek. “Each school has an account, and even organizations like the softball team and the chess club use it to relay information. We have received such a positive response from our parents that we know we will continue using SchoolReach.”

SchoolReach won a piggybackable California purchasing contract with the Monterey County Office of Education (MCOE) after responding to MCOE’s call for a competitive sealed bid. The bid solicitation was simultaneously announced by 22 other education purchasing cooperatives in other states in order to leverage national spending volume and to obtain the best possible volume pricing.

However, the bid was locally advertised in Monterey County and independently awarded in California by the Monterey County Office of Education under the requirements of Public Contract Code 20111, 20118 and other relevant California statutes. SchoolReach is offerings its best prices in California to agencies that use the CalSAVE contract through MCOE.