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12 - The Oakville Beaver, Friday September 26, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com Boards experimenting with Cashless Schools system By Tim Whitnell OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF The era of teachers, school secretaries and school council treasurers having to collect or count money coming from students for a variety of school activities may be coming to an end in Halton. Both the Halton public and Catholic school boards are entering the second year of a pilot project -- along with several other boards in Ontario -- in an experiment with a system that allows parents to pay for things like their children's school field trips, general fees and cafeteria food without any money changing hands. The Cashless Schools system (www.cashlessschools.com) is being tried out in Halton at nine public schools and one Catholic school, as well as at about eight other boards across the province. Halton public board business superintendent Steven Parfeniuk, overseeing his board's pilot project, said the system worked so well at White Oaks Secondary School in Oakville and Harrison elementary in Georgetown last year that it has been expanded to include seven more sites -- Aldershot, Central, M.M. Robinson and Robert Bateman high schools in Burlington, Linbrook and Sunningdale elementary schools in Oakville and Chris Hadfield elementary in Milton. "It allows parents of high school students to pay for field trips and other school-related activities either online or by direct debit," said Parfeniuk, the latter referring to instances such as swiping a student card in the cafeteria. "Parents can much more easily track (their) money going to the school for expenditures and kids aren't going to have to bring that $1.50 in for hot dog day," with less chance of it being lost and a child or parent getting upset about it, he noted. As for the cost to use the system, the opening October 2008 C L A S C cashless website says fees associated with parent accounts are established in conjunction with the school through whom the Cashless School Parent Accounts are issued. Some schools have a small fee for active accounts only. If you log in or add money to your account, you should not be charged however parents are asked to check with their school's administrators to see if there is a fee associated with the account. The day-to-day co-ordinator of the public board pilot project said her school has latched on to the cashless concept. Pam Cottingham, also the business manager at White Oaks S.S., said the Oakville high school had about 200 of its 1,300 students using the program in 2007-08 with the number of registrants more than doubling to start the new school year. Halton's Catholic school board is moving much slower with the student cashless pay system. 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