The U.S. consumer watchdog has found that low-income families typically pay as much as 60 cents per dollar in fees when paying for school lunches electronically.
Read full article: Going Ringside Ep. 81: Matt Riddle on life after WWE, wrestlers who really don’t like himLIVE RADAR: Another wet Wednesday with thunderstorms on tap; Flood Watch continues until 8 p.m. ThursdayLaundry day is so much easier with this viral cleanerRebecca Wood stands for a portrait outside her home, Friday, Aug. 30, 2024, in Maynard, Mass. Wood noticed a"program fee" required each time she loaded money onto her daughter's school lunch account.
“It’s just massively inconvenient,” said Joanna Roa, 43, who works at Clemson University in South Carolina as a library specialist and has two school-aged children. Roa said packing lunch for two kids every day, for two working parents, was an increased burden of time and effort. For the past two years, thanks to surplus funds, her school district has been providing free lunches in school, which has changed the equation, but Roa said that could end at any point.
In Wood’s case, she researched the fees and learned about the USDA requirement to offer fee-free payment by cash or by check. When she pointed this out to the superintendent of her daughter’s Massachusetts school district, the administrator said the lack of transparency was an oversight. To protest, Wood had planned to pay for her daughter’s lunches in coins at the school office, together with other parents. But then the pandemic hit, changing, among other things, school lunch policy.
While payment companies maintain that school districts have the chance to negotiate fees and rates when they form their contracts, the CFPB found that complex company structures “may insulate companies from competition and make school districts less likely to negotiate.” Just three companies — MySchoolBucks, SchoolCafe, and LINQ Connect — dominate the market, according to the report.
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