By Heather Scarlett
Record-Courier correspondent
Using a new online system, parents of students in the James A. Garfield district soon will be able to limit the amount of snacks their child can buy.
Treasurer Tracy Knauer updated the Board of Education Thursday on the computerized Lunch Box Program the district has been using for the last year.
Knauer said the district is working on getting a Web site for the prorgam up and running for parents.
Parents will be able to make payments to a child's account using PayPal and they can see what their child has been eating, she said.
Knauer said the system should be up and running by Jan. 3.
The program is a point of sale system that enters a student's lunch record onto a computer system.
Instead of using a cash register, a touch-screen computer resembling a cash register system is used by lunch workers.
For students in grades 5 through 12, a finger-scanning system was put in place during the 2006-07 school year to keep track of their lunch accounts.
The scanner is attached to the computer. The child scans a finger and using points of reference it brings up their account, Knauer said.
The cashier then charges the price of the food to the student's account, she said.
Benefits of the Lunch Box Program are:
*Privacy if the child has a free or reduced lunch plan and doesn't wish to discuss it.
*Accountability of the free and reduced lunch service is easier to report to the state with less paperwork.
*Children won't be paying in line if their parents have already paid for the lunch account online and the line will move quicker.
*Children have more time to eat their lunch.