Dinner Money Silliness

[jennifleurs]

DS just recently changed to school dinners and I was unsure of the correct etiquette with money etc. It costs £9.75 per week.

Sent him with a £10 note 2 consecutive weeks expecting change, none came home. 3rd week sent £10 and noted on envelope please can you give DS the change. School office phoned me to say that no, they cannot send DS or any child home with change as "it would be too much work".

I thought this rather snappy remark was interesting, and pondered how my boss would react if I started telling customers at work that I couldn't be bothered giving them correct change because there are so many of them each day it's simply too much work.

This week I have counted out £9.75 in correct change, in 10s, 5s, 2s and 1s.

I shall brace myself for a phone call!

our school has online payment but not many parents use it apparently. they do ask that you only send payment on a Monday as that is the day they employ an additional member of office staff count, record and bank the cash and cheques. if you forget dinner money on a Monday you let them know your child wants dinners but send the money the following week. when I drop off I handing the child a handful of coins or notes to ask for hot dinner today. when I asked my DD what the teacher did with this money she asks the child to wrap it in paper and sellotapes it into an envelope so the child can write their name on it, then sends it to the office. I assume they keep it in the school safe until the following Monday.

Hi. if you don't have a cheque book, does that mean you wouldn't be keen to use online payment system either,mid available anyway?
Glad school didn't phone you about the big bag of small change. Didn't think they would to be honest. You were a bit petty and they don't want to build it into a big fight, so just forget about that now.
I would just continue as you are. Send £10 some weeks and write on the envelope that you'd like the change carried over to the next week. Following week, pay a bit less. All sorted. No need for change jars or anymore aggro.

Hope you can have good relations with the school and lots of yummy dinners.

lots of people dont have cheque books as they are being phased out and not all banks issue cheque guarantee cards any more. A lot of shops dont take cheques any more either. I rarely use my cheque book and it is several years old.

I don't have a cheque book as my account doesn't come with one. I would love it if my DCs school used online payment but doesn't look likely at the moment. So I am the one looking for change for the school trip payment (£3.24 :))

ChocolateWombat I have a debit card I shop and pay bills online with, so think I could use that if they introduced it. I won't be sending any more protest change envelopes, I think I've made my (childish) point :)

It wouldnt be just your 7 year old changing meal arrangements that week tho would it? Parents change meal arrangements all the time at schools, of course they need notice of the changes. They dont JUST have your 1 child to consider, they have an entire school full.

at our school the children can decide day to day whether they want a school dinner or packed lunch so the school doesnt get any notice apart from in the morning on the day when the teacher asks who is having a packed lunch and who is having a school dinner. It is a combined campus with probably about 500 or so pupils altogether and somehow they manage to get everyone fed.

ilove dd's school is the same. Children decide on the day and parents pay on the day if they choose to. No notice from day to day of how many meals are needed and yet everyone seems to cope. The kitchen even takes orders at the kitchen door for sandwiches and jacket potatoes and fillings that are available alongside the standard menu/the vegetarian option. 400 children in a state primary.

if thats how the school operates then fine, they will be used to the system and know approximately how many to cater for. Most school dont operate like this and need advance notice to ensure they have enough meals.

I always pay by cheque for this reason.

How do you manage without a chequebook if you have a child at primary school?! When I look through, 80% of my cheques are to school.

I never write cheques to the school ever! I give cash for trips or pay online onto their dinner cards. The last cheque I wrote was to renew my passport and cant remember the one before that as it was so long ago.

and I have 2 at primary school

I don't see why it's such a big friggin drama for them. They cook all the food on site (and are very proud of this) so how much more effort is it really to do an extra dinner.

The first phone call I had when he changed to dinners, she was soo patronising and said 'I'll do it for you this once but in future we need a weeks notice'.

Maybe they're just disorganised behind the scenes.

Bramshott I pay cash obviously. The only person I actually know who has a cheque book is my Grandma lol

I wouldnt say they are disorganised, they just need some common curtesy from parents to give them notice, is that really too much to ask for? Like i already said its 1 dinner tyo you, for the school its not that simple esp if several children wasnt to make the switch in the same week. They dont just have your child to consider.

To add considering they are cooking fresh on site there is even more reason to give notice. They need to cook to numbers, you cannot expect them to order in extra food just in case a parent decides willy nilly one day to change a child onto cooked meals. Imagine how much extra that would cost, and how much food wastage there would be over the year.

We have a pay as you go system.
Child puts their hands up at registration each morning, if they want a hot lunch. 700 pupil school, so not a small effort. If we pay on a Monday/Friday we see the lady who deals with the money, on any other day if we pay extra it is added on the childs' tab.

I would work out how much money they have kept (that they shouldn't have) and take that amount off the 9.75.

Most schools expect parents to be mind readers

It's not just one random child for lunch though. What if twenty other parents decide their child needs a meal that day? Schools run on pretty tight margins, they can't just cater extra every day on the off chance someone wants a meal.

And we don't do change. Our office administration staff don't need to waste time trying to get a few coins back to every parent who is too lazy to send in the correct money. It would be a huge waste of time working out who needs what change, sending someone to the bank to get that correct amount of coinage, then sitting down and sorting it in to envelopes, distributing those envelopes to each classroom, putting them in pigeon holes for the students to take home, and fending off all the phone calls from parents who complain that their change hasn't come home because little johnny stopped at the corner store on the way home and bought a freddo frog.

yy to fucking cheque book. The cheques that aren't to school are to the PTA.

I wouldn't expect change tbh too many children to do that for. I send in £10 each week and then at the end of term they let me know by text how much credit I'm in and usually get a couple of days then that I don't need to pay for.

It's the big schools thatvarevmore likely to be able to be more flexible. The no?s they are catering for, mean the odd one or two more may be. Manageable, but then again, in a big school, if 10% decide they suddenly want dinner one day, that's a lot of children.
I really think parents should expect to give some notice of changes. We wouldn't be pleased if suddenly extra guests turned up for dinner, when we had catered for a certain number. They do have to buy the ingredients and do run on tight margins. Your £2 or so a day, doesn't allow the cooking of extra meals which get thrown away, just in case so done fancies the dinner that day. Schools usually publish the menus in advance now, so asking for at least a weeks notice, seems reasonable to me.

Blimey, I didn't think schools took cash for dinners - none of the four schools mine have attended did this - it was either half termly cheques or Parent pay (with special arrangements for anyone who couldn't pay upfront).

If the school is fretting about the administrative burden then surely there are better ways to manage this than having a weekly influx of cash?

MidniteScribbler And we don't do change. Our office administration staff don't need to waste time trying to get a few coins back to every parent who is too lazy to send in the correct money. It would be a huge waste of time working out who needs what change, sending someone to the bank to get that correct amount of coinage, then sitting down and sorting it in to envelopes, distributing those envelopes to each classroom, putting them in pigeon holes for the students to take home, and fending off all the phone calls from parents who complain that their change hasn't come home because little johnny stopped at the corner store on the way home and bought a freddo frog.

Exactly the sort of snotty 'we're far too busy to deal with you silly parents' attitude the school has. If you work in a school, dealing with "lazy parents" (ie LP trying to juggle child and working who forgot to have exact change ready) is your job.

Lazy school office staff.