I would like to see improvements made to the way elementary school children access their meal accounts.

At some point in the year, my 7-year-old was able to buy breakfast without our permission or knowledge (until we received a low balance notice about 3 weeks ahead of schedule). Also, we were erroneously charged for a meal at least once. We were unable to resolve the issue because the cafeteria manager never got back to us, and I'm not sure how an attendant is going to remember that our daughter did not have breakfast on the day in question when there is no tardy or absence to mark the occasion.

Children should carry some sort of card on a lanyard, much like high school ID cards with barcodes, that they keep in their classroom. They should also be scanned for meals before they choose their items to allow for my following suggestion :

On the school lunch account site, parents should have a way to disallow purchasing lunch and/or breakfast on certain days. This would prevent unauthorized expenditures and keep kids from deciding pizza is better than a turkey sandwich.

In terms of programming, this could be a simple one-week calendar with check boxes for Breakfast and Lunch. A fairly simple idea that will let parents control the money they put into the account, rather than trusting an elementary school child to make sound financial decisions.