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US consumer watchdog finds school lunch fees taking toll on parents

new york — Single mother Rebecca Wood, 45, was already dealing with high medical bills in 2020 when she noticed she was being charged a $2.49 "program fee" each time she loaded money onto her daughter's school lunch account. 


As more schools turn to cashless payment systems, more districts have contracted with processing companies that charge as much as $3.25 or 4% to 5% per transaction, according to a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The report found that though legally schools must offer a fee-free option to pay by cash or check, there's rarely transparency around it. 


"It wouldn't have been a big deal if I had hundreds of dollars to dump into her account at the beginning of the year," Wood said. "I didn't. I was paying as I went, which meant I was paying a fee every time. The $2.50 transaction fee was the price of a lunch. So I'd pay for six lunches, but only get five." 


The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the federal policy on fee-free school lunch, has mandated that districts inform families of their options since 2017, but even when parents are aware, having to pay by cash or check to avoid fees can be burdensome. 


"It's just massively inconvenient," said Joanna Roa, 43, who works at Clemson University in South Carolina as a library specialist and has two school-aged children. 


Roa said that when her son was in first grade and she saw the $3.25-per-transaction fee for lunch account transactions, she and her husband decided to send him to school with packed lunches instead. 


"A dollar here and there, I expected," she said. "But $3.25 per transaction, especially here in rural South Carolina where the cost of living is a lot lower — as are the salaries — is a lot." 


Roa said packing lunch for two kids every day, for two working parents, was an increased burden of time and effort. For the past two years, thanks to surplus funds, her school district has been providing free lunches in school, which has changed the equation, but Roa said that could end at any point. 


In its review of the 300 largest public school districts in the U.S., the CFPB found that 87% of sampled districts contract with payment processors. 


Within those districts, the companies charge an average of $2.37 or 4.4% of the total transaction, each time money is added to a child's account. For families with lower incomes who can't afford to load large sums in one go, those fees can hit weekly or even more frequently, increasing costs disproportionately. Families that qualify for free or reduced lunch pay as much as 60 cents per dollar in fees when paying for school lunches electronically, according to the report. 


In Wood's case, she researched the fees and learned about the USDA requirement to offer fee-free payment by cash or by check. When she pointed this out to the superintendent of her daughter's Massachusetts school district, the administrator said the lack of transparency was an oversight. To protest, Wood had planned to pay for her daughter's lunches in coins at the school office, together with other parents. But then the pandemic hit, changing, among other things, school lunch policy. 


In subsequent years, Wood became part of a campaign that successfully pushed for universal free school lunches in the state, but she continues to protest school processing fees for families. 


"Even if lunch itself is free, if you want to buy something a la carte, or an extra lunch, or some other transaction, you still have to pay that fee," Wood said. "They take money from people who need it the most." 


While payment companies maintain that school districts have the chance to negotiate fees and rates when they form their contracts, the CFPB found that complex company structures "may insulate companies from competition and make school districts less likely to negotiate." Just three companies — MySchoolBucks, SchoolCafe, and LINQ Connect — dominate the market, according to the report. 


Without the ability to choose which company to work with, "families have fewer ways to avoid harmful practices," the agency said, "including those that may violate federal consumer protection law." 


The companies named in the report did not respond to requests for comment. 


I'm a parent facing these fees. What can I do? 


Know that you always have a right to pay by cash or check, under federal policy. You can also request that your school district negotiate down the fees with their payment processing company, or request that the district cover the fees directly, which can give them leverage in negotiating a contract. 


If your school is located in a low-income area, you may also check whether your district qualifies for the Community Eligibility Provision, which would allow the school to provide free breakfast and lunch to all enrolled students. More information on the CEP is available at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's website. 
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Penguins/Kings Recap: Pens run away from Kings to earn 5-1 win

Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

The Pens put on a late night show, scoring early and often in a 5-1 victory over Los Angeles

Pregame

The Penguins don’t have the services of Rickard Rakell (personal reasons) but get P.O. Joseph back from the sick bay.

First period

Pittsburgh scores first on the power play, great individual effort from big Kevin Hayes. He keeps skating through the Kings, fakes out Joel Edmundson and drives to the net to create something out of nothing for his eighth goal of the season.

Sidney Crosby doubles the lead with another play that escalated quickly. Matt Grzelcyk threw a fluttering point shot to the net, Crosby got a deflection on it that hit the ice and bounced up. Nothing goalie David Rittich can do about that one. 2-0 Pens.

Shots go 12-6 in favor of the visitors and they carry a 2-0 lead after a strong first period.

Second period

The Pens keep building and find another goal, Philip Tomasino swoops around Edmundson and sends a pass over for Evgeni Malkin. Malkin shoots quickly and beats the goalie five-hole with the lateral movement. 3-0.

The worm starts to turn later on, Owen Pickering takes a holding the stick call and then while on the PK, Joseph takes a penalty to give the Kings 1:03 to work with in a 5v3 situation. The Kings work the puck around for Adrian Kempe to fire from the right side, he hits the post. They calmly regroup and try the same play again and this time his shot hits the mark. 3-1 game.

The Pens kill off the rest of the penalty, and though LA comes close to scoring, Pittsburgh takes the play the other way. It’s Hayes again driving to the net, this time he centers the puck for Cody Glass to chip it in and re-establish a three-goal lead in the last minute of the period.

Pens head to the final break up 4-1.

Third period

Pittsburgh pads the lead further, Crosby sets up Kris Letang for a shot. Rittich stops it but before he can freeze the puck, Anthony Beauvillier is hanging on the doorstep and guides the puck into the net behind the goalie. 5-1.

Rest of the game comes and goes and the Pens skate away with a victory.

Some thoughts

  • Emphatic celebration by Malkin on his goal, you could tell he was happy about that. Malkin scored against the Kings last month (Dec. 17th) but only had one goal in his last 11 games from then until tonight.
  • Wouldn’t mind seeing Tomasino and Malkin back together again. The youngster has some hands and can create offensive, which has been woefully short for Malkin and undoubtedly hurt his goal scoring ability in his older age. The two together might be too shaky defensively to last forever, but in bits and spurts the challenge to find enough skill to play with the best players (especially when a player like Rakell is absent) is huge for the Pens.
  • This game won’t go on the highlight reels for Edmundson. He’s actually having a pretty good season on the surface (a few goals, 11 points, 20+ minutes per game) but how the heck does a 31-year old slow defender who wasn’t exactly on the upswing get a four-year contract in free agency for a decent-sized $3.85m cap hit? Gotta be a matter of time before that looks regrettable.
  • Similarly, Rittich has had a better season so far than he showed tonight as far as keeping pucks out of the net with a 2.52 GAA, but it’s nice for the Pens to have an advantage in net for their goalie out-playing the guy at the other end. That hasn’t happened very often this season, which is a tough way to make a go of it.
  • Minor, but interesting that Pickering lost his stick two times that I can remember in the d-zone in the first two periods. The second instance he grabbed the stick out of an opponent’s hand to take a penalty. Not a huge deal but the learning curve in the fast NHL can test even the basics sometimes when waving that thing around and it goes astray, don’t see that happen frequently to veterans.
  • Speaking of penalties, update the log to show Joseph has gone to the box now in his last three games played, and four out of the last five. It hasn’t cost him a place in the lineup yet (he was out ill last game in Washington) but at some point it has to become a consideration, sometimes teams have to live with defenders taking the occasional stick foul but the frequency is becoming problematic.
  • Is Kevin Hayes the Pens’ secret weapon? He’s up to four goals in his last nine games (which, taking a look at the middle-six forwards on this team’s goal totals isn’t nothin’) and still can create with the puck on his stick.
  • Similarly, Glass is heating up with two goals in the last three games. It isn’t pretty, he awkwardly lost the puck and almost put himself offside at the line but kept things together enough to recover and eventually score from in tight on a shot that might have hit the goalie twice and still gone in. At this point, I guess the style points don’t matter for a guy with now three goals on the campaign.

In the end, good ol’ fashioned type of game for the Pens. Crosby and Malkin both score goals to push the team out to a fairly sizeable lead and they earn a victory on the road. Nice treat for those who stayed up late to watch it. Pittsburgh gets a few days on the road to catch their breath and the short trip over to Anaheim for their next game on Thursday.

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