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Dell Rapids School District Accepted into Free Meal Program

October 13, 2020 by Submitted

The Dell Rapids School District has been accepted into a program by the United States Department of Agriculture that allows all enrolled K-12 students to receive meals at no cost to them. The USDA Summer Seamless Program was extended as a result of the CARES Act, which supports families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both breakfast and lunch meals will be provided free, with no income guidelines, to all K-12 Dell Rapids Public School students. This program is retroactively in effect from October 1st, 2020, and will be in effect through the end of the 2020-2021 school year.

Charges for meals purchased since the beginning of October will be credited back to student accounts for future use. Note that only breakfast and lunch meals are free. Any second milk, a second meal, extra entrées, a la carte items, and elementary milk for breaks will not be free.

Parents or guardians are encouraged to review their elections in MySchoolBucks and adjust or stop automatic deposits into student accounts as needed

My School Bucks Fee to be Paid by Dell Rapids School District

October 14, 2018 by Matt Larson, Big Sioux Media

During their last regular board meeting on Monday, October 8th, the Dell Rapids School Board approved a change to the Heartland Payment Solutions agreement to have the My School Bucks service charges be paid by the district instead of parents.

When the feature for online lunch payments was introduced, the district knew that someone had to pay the $2.49 fee to have the service. Up until this point in time, the charge has been passed to the families using the online payment option. However, the district has been trying to brainstorm ideas of how to change that. Just recently the district was told by the state that the school can use food service fund dollars to pay that service charge.

“Because our food service fund has a good balance, I just recommend that we give this a try, see how it works, see if it helps with negative lunch accounts, but no matter what, our families are going to go ‘Thank you’,” said Dell Rapids Superintendent Dr. Summer Schultz.

Not only will this change help take the burden off of families to pay the service fee, Dr. Schultz is also hoping it will save time and burden on secretaries to handle lunch money checks and help save time on administration of negative lunch account balances.

“We’ve made so many good changes to the food service, this is that last one where it does cost us a little bit, but it just helps the program overall,” Dr. Schultz also said.

The motion to make the change was approved unanimously by the school board.