"It wouldn't have been a big deal if I had hundreds of dollars to dump into her account at the beginning of the year," Wood said. "I didn't. I was paying as I went, which meant I was paying a fee every time. The $2.50 transaction fee was the price of a lunch. So I'd pay for six lunches, but only get five."
"It's just massively inconvenient," said Joanna Roa, 43, who works at Clemson University in South Carolina as a library specialist and has two school-aged children.
"A dollar here and there, I expected," she said. "But $3.25 per transaction, especially here in rural South Carolina where the cost of living is a lot lower - as are the salaries - is a lot."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has mandated that districts inform families of their options since 2017, but even when parents are aware, having to pay by cash or check to avoid fees can be burdensome.
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