Anonymous wrote:I really wish that DCPS would actually collect poverty data manually instead of using inflated CEP percentages. There is no way that a Title I school like Bancroft is at 93% for CEP. The real poverty percentage for schools like Bancroft, Marie Reed and Garrison should be somewhere between 50-70%. The affluent students in PK at Marie Reed for example makes up 18% of the school population. None of these families qualify for TANF or SNAP. The affluent families should be forced to pay for lunch.

While I see your point, nationwide we are moving to a kinder approach that eliminates lunch shaming, so I think more districts will go to a system where everyone gets free lunch. Also, when all kids get free lunch it doesn’t single out the poor kids.

I really wish that DCPS would actually collect poverty data manually instead of using inflated CEP percentages. There is no way that a Title I school like Bancroft is at 93% for CEP. The real poverty percentage for schools like Bancroft, Marie Reed and Garrison should be somewhere between 50-70%. The affluent students in PK at Marie Reed for example makes up 18% of the school population. None of these families qualify for TANF or SNAP. The affluent families should be forced to pay for lunch.

Anonymous wrote:Ask the teacher why your child who brings lunch is getting charges for hot lunch.

What school are you at that the teacher is billing and/or serving lunch?

Ask the teacher why your child who brings lunch is getting charges for hot lunch.

No, there is nothing fishy going on and you are NUTS to be so worked up about it. If your kid's school is anything like the school my kids go to, each child who gets school lunch enters their student ID code into a keypad to "pay" for lunch. By far the most likely scenario is that some other child accidentally entered your kid's code and it wasn't caught by the cafeteria cashier. Again, if this is your biggest problem with your school, congratulations. It strikes me as a really small inconvenience. But maybe you could try to get the cafeteria cashier fired over the $6 that your kid has accidentally been charged - that seems like it might be up your alley.

I have had the strangest thing happening too. Ive been getting text messages about a negative cafeteria balance for a student at Chantilly High School in Fairfax. I called the school office, they transferred me to the cafeteria who had be call their centralized company. All told I was on the phone for about 2 hours and no one can seem to figure out the problem...and all parties involved including the supervisor were stumped. They said to call back when the next text came...I think I will just go on ignoring them!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Go into the school and talk to the person in charge in the school cafeteria. Obviously avoid lunch time, but they are likely the best person to answer the wurstion and clrar up the issue quickly. Unlikely to be near a phone while they are preparing meals.

Some people have full time jobs.

^This. And yet in so many schools , they don't even charge the non FARMS students for lunch because so many of their peers are FARMS. How is this fair? My son rarely if ever has school lunch and I just got the call. This happens every single year and I don't have the time to go in and discuss so I just pay it. I can't help but think they think "Oh it doesn't matter. They (we) won't miss the money anyway"

The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) is a non-pricing meal service option for schools and school districts in low-income areas. CEP allows the nation’s highest poverty schools and districts to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications. Instead, schools that adopt CEP are reimbursed using a formula based on the percentage of students categorically eligible for free meals based on their participation in other specific means-tested programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

I found this thread because we have been having the same problem with both our DDs. Neither one has EVER bought lunch, been mistakenly given lunch, etc. 2 years ago, we received the email, text, and VM notifications that DD1, who was in K at the time and didn't even eat lunch in the cafeteria, had a -$2.80 balance. Somehow we were able to reach someone at the main number given in the email to clear up the situation, explaining that DD1 had never eaten a school lunch, nor even been given an opportunity to do so. They accepted that it was a mistake, but suggested that we put some money in her school lunch account so that the problem doesn't reoccur. Umm...what!?!?! So, they wanted us to allow them to mistakenly charge us again for a lunch that wasn't eaten to avoid being harassed by all their notifications, due to their own mistake.

At the end of last year, we began receiving the same notifications (text, email, VM) that DD2, in PK4 at the time, had a -$2.80 balance. Again, DD2 has NEVER eaten, nor had the opportunity to eat, a school lunch. Despite countless emails, phone calls, messages, we have not been able to reach anyone nor have anyone respond.

I also find it interesting that, in both cases of this clearly incorrectly assigned debt, the amounts were $2.80. If my DDs actually did eat a school lunch, one would think that the full amount of the school lunch, $3, would have been charged.

Has anyone figured out a way to make this stop? We've been trying to clear this up since May. And no, I refuse to pay $2.80 for something that we did not receive. I don't care if it's only $2.80. Is this some kind of scam? When their suggestion to us the first time around was to just put money into the account so that when we're mistakenly billed for someone we didn't receive, we don't notice that it happened, I tend to think something fishy is going on. How many people have experienced this? How many times are they billing people and debiting accounts with money in them when no lunch was served?

Please help me make it stop!

Anonymous wrote:My child is in pk4 in a school where the pk4 kids don't get to go to the lunch area so lunches are pre ordered by the teacher in the morning. The email says my child has a balance. We don't even have a lunch account as I've packed her lunch every day this year and I declined to open one and filled out the form that said she would not get hot lunch.

So in short, she has no access to surreptitiously but lunch. How would we have a bal due when this is the case?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Go into the school and talk to the person in charge in the school cafeteria. Obviously avoid lunch time, but they are likely the best person to answer the wurstion and clrar up the issue quickly. Unlikely to be near a phone while they are preparing meals.

Some people have full time jobs.

^This. And yet in so many schools , they don't even charge the non FARMS students for lunch because so many of their peers are FARMS. How is this fair? My son rarely if ever has school lunch and I just got the call. This happens every single year and I don't have the time to go in and discuss so I just pay it. I can't help but think they think "Oh it doesn't matter. They (we) won't miss the money anyway"

Anonymous wrote:Go into the school and talk to the person in charge in the school cafeteria. Obviously avoid lunch time, but they are likely the best person to answer the wurstion and clrar up the issue quickly. Unlikely to be near a phone while they are preparing meals.

Some people have full time jobs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every child in DCPS has a "lunch account". It's recorded under their student ID number. You can now set up an access to pay for the negative balance or not, place money on the balance or not. There are a whole host of reasons you may have a (negative) balance towards your child's "account" (i.e. booked to your child's ID), including mistakes and mishaps. Yes, indeed could be that your child's lunch was dropped and someone graciously replaced it with the school lunch, could be a bagged lunch for a field trip. Could be that your child decided to get in the lunch line one day and try. Or, as meals are served family style in PreK classrooms, maybe your child reached for the bowl of something she/he wanted to try or felt left out of. Wouldn't that be a totally okay reason to pay for lunch? Could be a mistake, taking one for another, punching in the wrong number etc. I would ask the teacher first to rule out the sort of mishaps others mentioned. And then check with the lunch staff to see what may have happened. If the balance is minor, then why not just pay up and maybe place $20 or so on the balance, NBD as someone else mentioned. There may be a whole host of situations when you might be grateful that there is a balance to draw from. It carries over from year to year. Just make sure you don't have it fed automatically, as those flat fees are exorbitant on small amounts.

WTF? No. Do not pay some thing you don't owe.

+1 they started this badly-run program so that there would be less fraud in dealing with cash, and now there is more fraud because the workers are sloppy and it's hard to get customer service. Do not help this continue!

Anonymous wrote:Every child in DCPS has a "lunch account". It's recorded under their student ID number. You can now set up an access to pay for the negative balance or not, place money on the balance or not. There are a whole host of reasons you may have a (negative) balance towards your child's "account" (i.e. booked to your child's ID), including mistakes and mishaps. Yes, indeed could be that your child's lunch was dropped and someone graciously replaced it with the school lunch, could be a bagged lunch for a field trip. Could be that your child decided to get in the lunch line one day and try. Or, as meals are served family style in PreK classrooms, maybe your child reached for the bowl of something she/he wanted to try or felt left out of. Wouldn't that be a totally okay reason to pay for lunch? Could be a mistake, taking one for another, punching in the wrong number etc. I would ask the teacher first to rule out the sort of mishaps others mentioned. And then check with the lunch staff to see what may have happened. If the balance is minor, then why not just pay up and maybe place $20 or so on the balance, NBD as someone else mentioned. There may be a whole host of situations when you might be grateful that there is a balance to draw from. It carries over from year to year. Just make sure you don't have it fed automatically, as those flat fees are exorbitant on small amounts.

WTF? No. Do not pay some thing you don't owe.

OP-- we have been in the same cycle for YEARS! I have set up the account (My School Bucks) due to negative balance and got that figured out. But then two things: I tried to get money left in account after child left DCPS and have another child who is apparently eats two hot lunches at least once a week even though his is pre-k 4 and I pack a lunch. Called My School Bucks who said you have to talk to the food manager at school since money is there not at My School Bucks. Food manager has no idea about the system or how to refund money/stop excessive charges. Office staff and principal are no help. Now we are negative balance again because I have no idea why my child, who finds the hot lunch disgusting, is being charged for hot lunch twice in one day once a week. I get robo calls and e-mails daily.

I'm not bragging about packing a lunch. I wish my kid would eat hot lunch. I gave her the choice before school started as we came from a daycare that provided hot lunch daily and that made life easier. After I read her the menu and she heard it was the same as daycare she didn't want it.

The balance is such that at the cost of school lunch she would have had to have eaten school lunch 40+ times. Again, I would have called them or the school but they sent these things after 6 pm. I don't know ant pat execs to ask.