cafeteria charge policy

A copy of the charge policy shall be sent home with each student at the beginning of the school year. The charge policy shall also be included in handbooks and/or online portals. Breakfast is served at no cost to all Barrow County students. School lunch meals should be paid for in advance or at time of purchase.

Barrow County School System does not allow school lunch charges except in unusual circumstances. Payments may be made with cash or check at the register. Secure online payments may be made with a debit or credit card through My School Bucks.

• Elementary and middle school students may only charge up to 5 meals. After this, an alternative meal will be provided.
• High school students may not charge any meals. An alternative meal will be offered to the student.

An alternative meal consists of a cheese sandwich, fruit and milk.

Students who owe for charges are not allowed to purchase à la carte items. À la carte items cannot be charged. If a student is not allowed to purchase à la carte items from their account, parents must notify their school cafeteria manager.

To prevent your child from being offered an alternative meal, please provide money for your student’s meals each day or prepay for meals in advance. To assist parents, student account balances can be monitored at any time though our online payment program www.myschoolbucks.com. This service can be used regardless of whether you use the online funding option (a service fee is charged) or send cash or checks directly to the school. Create an account for each student, then throughout the year monitor the student meal account balance (or fund their account). We highly recommend that you set a Low Balance Alert ($5 or higher is suggested) using the links on the page to receive an email reminder when funds are low.

School cafeterias make every effort to inform students and parents when funds are low by sending home notices via students, verbal reminders to students, telephone calls and/or emails.

Parents are responsible to ensure that children have an adequate lunch from home or sufficient funds to purchase school meals.

Principals will aid in the collection of outstanding balances.

Please Note: If your check is dishonored by the bank, a service fee will be assessed in accordance to state law and federal guidelines. In providing a check as payment, you authorize electronic representment if your check should return unpaid. Also, you authorize service charges and processing fees, as determined by law, to be debited (at our option) from the same account via paper draft or electronic funds transfer.