wildelake.com

School District Website Program Announcement

            HCPSS is always looking for ways to be more efficient and effective in our fiscal policies.  While it may seem like a minor issue to some, receipt of non-sufficient fund (NSF) checks is a time consuming and costly issue.  As with any business, HCPSS has an obligation to our clients, the community taxpayers, to be fiscally accountable.  Processing NSF checks can take valuable time from the school district personnel.  To manage this process, our District began using FARS (Federal Automated Recovery Systems) on August 1, 2009, to protect the interest of all in our school system community against the time consuming and costly recovery of Non-Sufficiently funded checks.

           FARS utilizes the federal and state laws allowing the electronic recovery process of NSF checks which results in a high rate of recovery at no cost to the school district.  The cost becomes the responsibility of those who wrote non-sufficient fund checks with the electronic recovery of the face amount of the check and the electronic recovery of the state fee from the bad check writer’s bank account.  Utilizing FARS is an effort by the school District to be fiscally accountable in a more efficient and cost effective manner.

            Wilde Lake High School and all Howard County schools will gladly accept checks.  When a check is used as payment, the check writer authorizes us either to use information from the check to make a one-time electronic fund transfer from the check writer’s account or to process the payment as a check transaction.  The check writer authorizes us to collect a fee through an electronic fund transfer from the check writer’s account if the payment is returned unpaid.  Checkwriters also authorize electronic collection of a $35 fee in accordance with Maryland state laws for checks returned due to insufficient funds.