Fargo Public Schools will offer online registration forms and payments beginning with the 2015-16 school year.
By Fargo Public Schools Information Technology Director Bill Westrick
Every August, parents of Fargo Public Schools (FPS) students are asked to update their family and child’s information. An envelope full of colorful forms comes in the mail or is handed out at Back To School Night, and each form needs to be filled in from scratch. If you have more than one FPS student, you find yourself entering your family information over and over again. Once the forms are completed, you then visit the school to turn in the forms, and stand in line to pay any fees for the year. The forms are then processed manually by office staff, who have to decipher the handwriting of thousands of parents. It seems like there should be a better way of doing all of this, doesn’t it? Well, now there is.
I am happy to announce that Fargo Public Schools is moving to online registration forms and online fee and lunch payments this summer. For parents of existing FPS students these forms will even be pre-loaded with information submitted last year, allowing you to simply and quickly verify information or change individual items as needed. At the end of the information verification process, you can also choose to pay your child’s 2015-16 school fees online via credit card with no transaction fees, including lunch payments! These online payments are managed by SchoolPay, a company dedicated to providing secure, reliable online school payments.
The first step in being able to use the online registration/fee payments system is to make sure you have a Powerschool parent account and that you have attached your children to that account. An easy access link to PowerSchool is posted on the District’s website homepage. Once you have done this, you are ready for the fall enrollment forms verification, which will open at the beginning of August. Parents who have never created a Powerschool parent account or haven’t attached all of their children to the account should have received a letter explaining how to create this account and connect all of your children’s records to that account. If you have not received this communication, or need another copy, please contact your current school office. The communication includes personalized account ID and password information necessary for account set up. For families without internet access, computer kiosks will be available to use at each school during regular business hours.
The lunch payment process is already up and running, so if you want to try out the new system and add some money to your child’s account or check your child’s meal history, you can do so. Just log into Powerschool with your parent account, click the icon in the upper right corner of the window, and select SchoolPay from the menu that appears. You can view recent meal history or securely enter your credit card information and make a payment to your child’s account. Lunch payments are processed every ten minutes, so your child’s lunch balance at school will increase shortly after completing the online transaction.
Welcome to online registration forms and payments, along with greater efficiency and processing speed!