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.