Food Services Management School Nutrition Charges

Students will be allowed to charge meals.  The charge limit is $10.00.

Students will continue to be served a complete reimbursable meal while the SNP staff works to collect delinquent debt.

Adults (district employees) may charge on a monthly basis.  All charges must be paid in full on or before the 5th day of the following month.  Any delinquent charges remaining on accounts for adults at the end of the school year may be garnished from the June payroll check.  Adults that leave before the end of the school year may have wages garnished for the unpaid charge amounts from their last paycheck.

Visitors may not charge.

Charges will not be allowed during the last two weeks of school.

School Nutrition staff will inform students that their meal balance is low or delinquent as they come through the serving line.

School Nutrition staff will send charge notices via the students, telephone calls or emails on a regular basis.

Students who owe for charges are not allowed to purchase supplemental sale items.

Supplemental sales cannot be charged by students.

Delinquent charges that cannot be collected from the customer or from the student's family through School Nutrition Program (SNP) staff will be referred to the principal or his/her designee who will contact the parent.  If a successful resolution is not reached, SNP may use legal mans to seek reimbursement for excess funds owed and/or turn over to a collection agency.

It is the goal of the SNP to eliminate unpaid charges at the end of each academic year, however unpaid meal charges will be carried over at the end of the school year as a delinquent debt and SNP staff will continue collection efforts into the next school year.

Delinquent charges will be considered bad debt when a child withdraws from Pickens County School System without clearing charges from his/her school meal account.  Bad debts will be paid by the school that the student withdraws from by June 30 following the end of each school year.  Any bad debt paid by the schools that is eventually recovered by the SNP will be reimbursed to the school that paid it.

Records that should be maintained include:

  • Evidence of efforts to collect unpaid meal charges
    • School nutrition manager will print a list of negative balances for active students when printing meal charge letters. This list will provide documentation of letters sent home.
    • School nutrition office will provide a list of dates that negative balance emails were sent.
  • Financial documentation showing when the unpaid meal charges became an operating loss (bad debt)
    • School nutrition office will print a list of inactive students, by school, that have negative account balances during post planning of each school year. This list will document which accounts are considered bad debt. These lists will be provided to the principal at each school as a request for payment.
  • Evidence that the funds written off as bad debt were restored to the school Nutrition account from non-Federal sources.
    • Copies of checks received from each school will be kept as documentation that the funds were restored to the School Nutrition account from non-Federal sources.

Regulation EE-R(1):Food Services Management Original Issue Date: 06/06/2017, Revised 6/2022