About Us
Press Release
Bellarmine College Preparatory & The ECCOgen Prepaid Campus Card
Bellarmine College Preparatory partners with ECCOgen to move towards a cashless campus, delivering a safer, more convenient and efficient payment method at no cost to the school.
"With the prepaid campus card system in place we are seeing a 75% decrease in the amount of time it takes to get kids through the cafeteria line, we have reduced accounting time by over 33%
and our food sales are up 50% from the same time last year"
Tom Gorndt, Controller, Bellarmine College Preparatory
Bellarmine College Preparatory is an all-male, private secondary school located in San Jose California. Founded in 1851, it is the oldest secondary school in California. The school is a Roman Catholic school in the Jesuit tradition of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Bellarmine enrolls more than 1,500 students, over 99% of whom go onto institutions throughout the United States and abroad, both public and private, including the University of California system, the Big Ten, the Big East, the Ivy League, the ACC, and the United States military academies. Bellarmine competes in the West Catholic Athletic League.
Challenge:
Over the years Bellarmine College Preparatory has been faced with a common challenge
facing both public and private schools…handling cash. With a limited amount of time to
get over 1,500 students fed, the speed at which the cafeteria is able to collect payment
from students is critical. Cash handling at the point of sale continually slowed the flow
of the cafeteria line leaving many students with barely enough time to finish their meal
before the next class. Bellarmine allows students to seek food at off campus venues;
while this does relieve the cafeteria line somewhat, it does present a safety concern for
students with cash becoming a potential target for theft off campus.
Meanwhile, Bellarmine parents had to be vigilant about remembering to have cash on hand to provide their child each day yet there was no accountability or control for how that money was being spent. Parents can only hope that their kids are using the money for lunch then trust that their child is making good food choices.
From an administrative standpoint, handling cash is expensive. "We were spending one half of a full time employee's resources accounting for cash", says Tom Gorndt, Controller of Bellarmine. "We started looking into ways that we could provide kids a safe way to make on-campus purchases, speed up the cafeteria transactions, while addressing the daily burden parents have in doling out cash on a daily basis and hoping it gets spent appropriately".
Colleges have had cashless campus systems for years and recently public school systems have started adopting cashless programs however Bellarmine as well as other private schools are faced with a unique challenge; unlike public schools where the state pays for the cashless systems, private schools wanting to make this upgrade have historically had to shoulder the costs which would are otherwise applicable to a seemingly endless list of other good uses.
A Solution Tailor Made for Private Schools
Michael Ferguson, President of San Francisco based ECCOgen, approached Bellarmine
with a unique value proposition. ECCOgen would provide the system free to Bellarmine,
complete with state-of-the-art touch-screen POS systems, installation, training, and web
portal, which enables parents to load funds and view their child's purchase activity.
Parents wishing to opt into the program may do so with a nominal annual fee. Those who
opt in not only benefit from the convenience and control inherent in the program but also
can quickly offset their cost through savings of up to 50% at over 15,000 retailers through
the included Student Advantage Network.
Bellarmine parents enroll their student(s) in the program; establish the card's spending
limits by loading the funds, as well as monitor purchases and food choices on-line at
www.myschoolaccount.com. Students can make purchases on campus using their PIN
(personal identification number) or biometrics. Parents can set automatic reminders to
add more money once the account balance falls below a specified amount.
"We wanted to make sure that the system was secure and reliable. We felt very comfortable knowing that they system is developed and supported by Food Service Solutions which has over 20 years of experience and serves over 300 school districts across the country," says Gorndt.
The Results
Gorndt says "With the campus card in place, we are seeing a 75% decrease in the amount
of time it takes to get kids through the cafeteria line, we have reduced the amount of time
needed to count cash by over 30% and our food sales are up 50% from the same time last
year." While the program is optional at Bellarmine, parents have definitely embraced it
with over 60% opting in the first year. "The feedback has been very positive from the
parents" states Gorndt who went on to say, "no daily cash hand outs, a sense of control
over spending as well as information about food choices obviously outweigh any
concerns about the annual fee."
"We had some concerns about students sharing PINs but the photo identification combined with the PIN system utilized on the FSS hardware exceeded school's expectations for security and worry about lost cards and students sharing account information, to date we have not had a single issue," explained Gorndt.
Another benefit is that Bellarmine is now able to provide complete anonymity to the 4% of students who are on a subsidized meal plan. Before this technology kids often shied away from using the discounted or free meal programs due to possible embarrassment of being singled out.
Conclusion
"Moving toward a cashless campus has been a great decision. We plan on extending
cashless payments beyond the cafeteria to include the bookstore, and school events."
When asked whether he thinks other private schools will be moving towards cashless
programs, Gorndts says, "Cashless card programs have become so popular at the
University level and now even at public schools that parents have come to expect it. That
coupled with the inherent problems associated with cash make it not a matter of if but
when…" as far as his decision to work with ECCOgen, Gorndt states "I strongly
recommend the ECCOgen Prepaid Campus Card program, the product and system is
proven, the installation, training and support is great. It solved the problems we had
expected it to and that it can be implemented at no cost to school makes it a win for
everybody."
