The new food services system the Española School District installed has had some connection issues that is preventing it from working as efficiently as possible.
The District set up a point of sale system at Española Valley High School to expedite the flow of students purchasing their lunch during their break.
“We’ve gone to a POS system, which is a cashier that is everything electronic. We invested about, I believe, it was like $14,000 to buy that unit to try and see if the kids would go in any quicker, so that the kids wouldn’t have to be in line for so long,” Sennie Quintana, the transportation/food services director for the District said.
However, the system has been having difficulty accessing the Internet, slowing the progress of students who wish to quickly purchase their lunches and move on to their other activities.
“And there has been challenges because the Internet in there, the wireless line, doesn’t work as well. The service in there is not great,” Quintana said.
According to Española School District Superintendent Danny Trujillo, there are a couple of avenues that may be pursued, to make the lunch program viable from a budgetary standpoint. Decreasing the administrative cost associated with the food services program either by reducing the cost of food or reducing staff is one option.
According to Trujillo, if lunch services could be made more efficient, then perhaps more students would purchase their lunch at the school rather than going off campus or foregoing having lunch altogether.
The new system was supposed to address that issue. Since all of the students’ information is stored in the system, it can cut down on the transaction time significantly.
According to the purchase order, the system cost the District just over $13,000 and not the $14,000 that Quintana estimated. The breakdown by line item is as follows:
• Española paid $750 for a licensing fee to use the program at a central location.
• It paid $3,440 for the licensing fee to use the program at the high school’s cafeteria.
• The actual terminal and all of the input devices cost almost $3,500.
• The company charged the District $4,500 to have staff come to the high school to install the system and train the appropriate personnel on how to use the device and program.
• The District also paid $890.25 for annual technical support and maintenance to ensure the system continues to work properly.
• Along with that line item is a $45 freight cost.
The point of sale system, known as WebSMARTT, is designed to allow students who wish to purchase their lunches to pay by simply swiping their identification cards through the machine and punching in their personal identification numbers. The information about the students’ lunch programs is sent to and processed at Central Office. The office determines what price the students should pay, depending on whether they are on a free or reduced lunch. Once the students purchase their lunches, the information is also sent to Central Office for record keeping and processing.