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School-Lunch Monitoring System for Parents
karvind writes "According to Yahoo, three school districts in the Atlanta area last week became the first in the country to offer the parental-monitoring option of an electronic lunch payment system called Mealpay.com. The system was initially designed as a convenient way to make sure children bought lunch without worrying that lunch money would get lost, spent on other things or stolen. But on parent's request online meal-monitoring option was added and now parents can see all of a student's lunch purchases."
This is already being done in some (quite few) european countries, one of them is Sweden. Unfortunately, the developing direction in Sweden is more and more against charging for school lunches. It's still subsidized, but there has been a lot of criticism against the kommuns (municipilaties) that have started charging a fee.
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
I would love to have checked it out but:
"Your browser is not supported for use with this site. This site requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or above on Windows platforms or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 or above on Macintosh platforms. You can download the latest Microsoft Internet Explorer by clicking the link below."
Imagine my suprise to learn that this school lunch site was offering me the latest Microsoft Internet Explorer for Linux. But then I follow the link provided only to learn there is no such critter. It would seem that this WWW isn't so world wide, you have to use a proprietary browser that is only provided for an extremely limited number of OS.
Forget the whole big brother issue, this concept should be banned on the browser issue alone.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
I happen to live in the Atlanta area. I happen to go to school. I happen to go to a school that is using Mealpay. Here's how it works in practice. Every student is assigned a six (new kids get 7 digits now) digit number. This number is used to log into the school's computer network and to buy food at lunch. At every checkout line is a small keypad where we punch in that number. Once we do that, the lady working the register punches in what we buy on a touch screen. We can either pay for it cash or have it automatically deducted.
Most of that you could have gathered from the article, I know. Anyway, I think its a decent system compared to our old one. Before we had to either bring cash every day or go down to the cafeteria first thing in the morning to drop off a check and hope you get to homeroom on time. Now all I have to do is go online and a few clicks later I have food tommorow. My mom doesn't really care what I pick up at lunch and even if she did she is way to computer illiterate to figure out how to look up what I've been eating. Also the line moves much faster now that the whole thing is mostly automated instead of waiting for the lunch lady to find my name among a million others in the computer.
What do Saddam Hussain and Little Miss Muffet have in common? They have Kurds in their Whey.
ummm how do you get that coke is ok from that statement? to me it suggests coke is just as bad...
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
- Spaghetti, mixed in with sauce in a large vat, cut into small pieces that are easy to ice-cream-scoop onto a tray.
- French bread pizza, also known as a mozzarella-parmesan-cheddar blend and runny sauce, baked onto a piece of bread and topped with soggy pepperoni
- Mexican Day: Cheese Quesadilla. Different from the non-redundant "Quesadilla" in that you are expected to be fully nourished by one small tortilla, folded in half and filled with a non-generous helping of grated cheddar.
- Hot dog. Not kosher, not turkey, not the kind that plumps when you cook it, but the random-pig-guts kind. With one mustard packet, two if you're nice to the lunch lady. They ran out of ketchup. The relish is contaminated with mayonnaise.
People in the real world do not desire such foods, reputable restaurants do not serve them. School lunches lead to confusion as there is little correlation between them and good food in the real world (this may explain the popularity of establishments such as The Olive Garden and Pat & Oscar's...). Perhaps if the food in school lunches was healthy, not untasty, eater-friendly, and had corresponding "real food" equivalents, people would have better eating habits.-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Last year MealPay had failed to credit my son's account twice. Let me tell you, explaining to your child why has the cafeteria people stamped his hand three days in a row is an embarassing experience for both parties involved. (To those of you unfamiliar with the practice, cafeterias put stamps on childrens' hands when they run out of money on their accounts.) I called MealPay to find out what happened, and the Tech Support lady there told me *I* had to call Gwinnett County school board and tell them that their credit card payment module in MealPay's software isn't working. You guessed it right, I am paying for my son's lunches with a check now. One of two or three paper checks that I have to write a month.