Writing bad checks to the school system’s food services department will mean a call from a collection agency come January.
Officials from the Charles County public schools said this week that the food services department no longer would take responsibility for collecting on returned checks.
According to the school system, $1,090 worth of bad checks have been written to the schools since September.
Last year there were 379 bad checks, totaling more than $9,000.
School spokeswoman Katie O’Malley-Simpson said that while 379 bad checks isn’t that much in a school system with more than 26,000 students, the amount is big enough to take up a lot of time and resources from the food services department to retrieve the funds.
The food services department operates on an enterprise fund of $10 million. The department balances its budget each year and counts on a certain amount of revenue.
O’Malley-Simpson said that since the announcement was made, several families have paid off their debt to the department.
“The change only involves returned checks and does not affect payments made on MealpayPlus, the secure, Internet-based system parents can use to deposit money electronically on their child’s cafeteria account,” according to a news release from the schools.
Beginning Jan. 2, all returned checks will be handed over to a collection agency.
The agency, Envision Payments, which the school system uses for other departments, will handle the bad checks by seeking to collect the face value of the check plus an additional $35 fee, allowed by Maryland law.
O’Malley-Simpson said that bad checks do not affect the student associated with the check since the check is returned long after the child has received his lunch. Students without lunch on any given day have alternative lunches offered to them such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or cheese sandwiches provided by the school system depending on any food allergies.
For more information, contact the food services department at 301-392-5570 or individual schools.
gphillips@somdnews.com
