Deer Creek-Mackinaw Community Unit School District No. 701

Steve Yarnall, Superintendent     Kathy Wurster, Secretary     Pam Gardner, Bookkeeper

401 East Fifth Street, Mackinaw, IL  61755

Voice:  309-359-8965           Fax:  309-359-5291

 

Dee-Mack Primary & Junior High

Dee-Mack Intermediate School

Dee-Mack High School

Christina Lammers, Principal

Frank Reliford, Principal

Bill Lamb, Principal

102 East Fifth Street

506 North Logan Street

401 East Fifth Street

Mackinaw, IL  61755

Deer Creek, IL  61733

Mackinaw, IL  61755

Voice: 359-4321     Fax: 359-4015

Voice: 447-6226     Fax: 447-5201

Voice: 359-4421     Fax: 359-3125

Friday, January 04, 2008

 

Dear Parents,

 

We realize it can be difficult to keep track of fees and payments to the school district.  To help simplify payment of school fees, Deer Creek-Mackinaw Community Unit School District No. 701 has enrolled in an internet-based service called Café Prepay.  This service is a website where you can pay for school lunches or textbook fees using your Visa, MasterCard, Discover or American Express.  Participation in this service is voluntary; you may enroll at any time.

 

Café Prepay enables parents to keep track of their child’s account balance.  In addition, the website offers Automatic Replenish.  This is optimal for the student whose lunch spending varies greatly from day to day.  With automatic replenish, when the student's account balance goes below a specified amount, another specified amount is then deposited into the student's account via credit card.  Using "automatic replenish on low balance", the student will never run out of money.  Conversely, your credit card will not be charged until the student's balance goes below the specified dollar amount.

 

To get started, you will first enroll at cafeprepay.com.  You will be asked to enter your email address and a password, which will be used each time you log in.  Please note that a valid email address is required and that Café Prepay stores any necessary personal information in a secure, offline database which is accessed only to process payments and send payment confirmations via email. 

 

Up to now, Dee-Mack Schools have not been able to accept credit card payments for school lunches.  Businesses that accept credit cards must forfeit a percentage of the sale to the credit card company, as well as pay a transaction fee and a monthly fee.  We simply cannot afford to absorb these fees.  Café Prepay was implemented in 2000 to collect credit card payments on behalf of school districts across the country.

 

In order to keep this service free to the school district, any item requiring Café Prepay to advance credits to your child’s account is sold at a small premium.  This website fee covers all costs involved with this service, such as website maintenance, personnel, support, processing, electronically transferring payments to school bank accounts and infrastructure costs.

 

Please visit pay4lunch.com/faq.aspx for more information.  If you have questions that are not answered on the website, we encourage you to use the “Contact” link for Café Prepay or call Patsy Davis (PDavis@deemack.org) , Food Service Manager at 359-3172.  We hope you find this service a convenient alternative.

 

Yours for excellent schools,

Steve Yarnall

Superintendent