Case Study: Hayward Unified School District reduces unpaid lunch balances and saves thousands with OnSolve One Call Now

A Key Ingredient for Food Service Serving 20,000 Students

Hayward Unified School District’s Food Services Department serves more than 20,000 K–12 students across 31 East Bay schools—about 65% of whom are Latino/Hispanic—and struggled with outdated parent communication (mailings and cafeteria announcements) to notify families about free/reduced lunch eligibility and unpaid lunch balances. The inefficient process drove up labor and mailing costs, left large unpaid balances, and embarrassed students; the district sought a solution such as OnSolve’s One Call Now automated critical communications system.

OnSolve deployed One Call Now integrated with the district’s Nutrikids billing system to automatically generate bilingual calls and emails (about 1,100 notifications every two weeks), pulling negative-balance records and auto-filling student names and amounts. In the first year using OnSolve’s One Call Now (2016–17) unpaid lunch balances were significantly reduced, the district saved several thousand dollars and staff time, parents reported better awareness of balances, and students were spared public embarrassment.

Hayward Unified School District

Carlos Melara

Technology Specialist