Wesley Chapel families with three kids in Pasco County Schools could keep about $42 a month in their pockets starting Thursday, Aug. 13, when the district's free Pasco One app becomes the go-to platform on the first day of school.

The savings come from eliminating MySchoolBucks, the third-party lunch-payment service that charged $3.50 every time a parent loaded money onto a child's meal account.

"You could spend about $42 a month if you've got three kiddos," school board member Jessica Wright told FOX 13 on Tuesday, Aug. 11. "You're loading that once a week and that's anywhere from 11 to 15 school lunches a week."

Wright, a high school social studies teacher who first proposed dropping MySchoolBucks in January after hearing from parents about the costs, said the district built meal payments directly into Pasco One's ONE Wallet feature so families pay zero transaction fees.

More than 12,000 people had already downloaded the app as of Tuesday, Aug. 11, according to the district. Pasco is among a small number of public school districts in the Tampa Bay area offering its own all-in-one app.

School board Chair Colleen Beaudoin called the app "a tangible resource" and said she was glad the district launched it at the start of the year rather than mid-semester. She added that anytime the district can limit what families have to spend on fees, it helps.

Pasco One consolidates grades, attendance, bus routes, school schedules and meal payments into a single login. It replaces the older MyStudent platform along with MySchoolBucks. All 106 Pasco County schools open Thursday, Aug. 13.

As we reported on the Pasco One app launch Aug. 9, the app had been available for download ahead of the first day, but Thursday marks its first full day of use across the district.

How to download: Search "Pasco County Schools parent app" in the Apple App Store or Google Play. Log in with existing ParentVUE credentials. Families without an account can create one through the district's Parent Portal page.