The days when Chinook's Edge School Division students need to bring cash to school to pay for lunches and other activities may be on the way out thanks to work now underway to implement a division-wide online payment system.
In the works for the past two years and currently in place in several schools, including in Innisfail, the Acorn system allows parents to go online and pre-pay for their kids' meals. It also allows parents to pay for field trips and other activities the same way.
“The parents can go online, choose the options they want (for meals for their kids) and they can prepay that online,” said Chinook's Edge treasurer Susan Roy.
The new system is both a convenience for students and big time saver for teachers and staff, she said.
“Our goal is to eventually substantially reduce the amount of cash that kids are having to bring to school and that teachers are having to handle and count and submit to the office,” she said. “Think of all the time and effort teachers spend doing that when they could be spending that time with kids directly. We want to take that distraction away from them.”
She said it will take some time to put the new meal payment system in place for all 43 Chinook's Edge schools.
“It's going to happen at a different pace in every community,” she said, noting there is no firm timeline for complete implementation across the division.
Chinook's Edge has already been collecting school fees online for two years. The new luncheon payment system is essentially an expansion of that system, she explained.
“We needed a new school fee software a couple years ago,” she said. “The first year we implemented all the software and got the school fees online and our school were pretty happy with the new software. The next year we implemented the online payment, but we didn't push it too hard; we wanted to see how it would go in the schools.
“Last year we collected about a quarter of a million dollars online and this year we are already at a quarter of a million dollars and we are only two months in. We are happy with the growth. So far this year we've probably collected about a third of the money online. Eventually we'd like that number to be a lot higher.”
Looking ahead, Chinook's Edge students may someday be able to go completely cash-free at schools.
“That's an option that is coming,” she said. “We are hoping at some point that a student's student card could be swiped and it would reduce a balance in the online payment system. But that option is not quite available yet. The programmer is working on that.”
