The Houston school board didn't spend all its time yesterday visiting with Vince Young and approving a new merit pay plan — it also adopted a $5.3 million cafeteria automation system that will let parents monitor their kids' meals online.
Parent advocates said they're thrilled at the prospect of being able to keep a closer eye on both what their children are eating and what the district is serving."This is going to lead to better accountability," said Mercedes Alejandro, president of Parents for Public Schools, who worries that her 14-year-old daughter may be skipping lunch. "We're not just watching kids. We're watching Aramark."
HISD pays Aramark about $5 million a year to operate the cafeterias at the district's 300-plus campuses.
Similar systems, which also allow parents to pay for their kids' meals using the Internet, are already being used (to rave reviews) in Dallas, Austin and Pearland, which implemented computerized lunches in August. Under the Pearland system, students enter a six-digit ID code on their way out of the lunch line, cafeteria workers check to make sure the meals don't conflict with parental restrictions and the software deducts the cost of the meal from students' balances. Parents may then go online to check what their children have bought, whether they skipped a meal or had an extra dessert. The system will also help the district keep track of subsidized lunches, which have apparently been a record-keeping nightmare in the past.
Yes, it sounds terribly efficient, but we wonder how many parents will bother to keep track of their kids' dietary habits — after all, page after page of Salisbury steak and lima beans would get kind of mind-numbing, wouldn't it?
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