As the new semester began on February 2, students were introduced to a shift from three lunches to two. One reason why the lunch schedule happened was to give teachers more time to teach their students as they lose time during the fourth period by trying to get students to focus on their lesson.
“One of the complaints we get is that, every time a class comes into a room, there’s a certain amount of time that you have to spend refocusing and getting students organized,” Principal Alex Chertok said. “…Over the course of the year, the impact is we’re pulling out two weeks of instruction from that class. It’s three minutes here, it’s three minutes there. Any given day, you’re not missing that much. But the reality is its real time that’s lost to instruction that teachers feel, and they feel it in terms of how much progress they can make with their students over the course of the year.”
On the other hand, some students found the previous second lunch was useful, as it was a halfway break in the day. Giving students a break in the middle of the day allowed some to focus more in not only the fourth period, but for the rest of the day.
“This is supposed to be our break, our 30-minute detox for the day,” junior Misky Raska said. “That way, we can kind of de-stress from the first half of our day and go in ready and more focused for the second half, which isn’t being allowed to happen, because we’re just so overstimulated from just trying to find a seat.”
The school administration has also addressed seating issues by adding more tables for students to sit at.
“On average, during the middle of each lunch, there’s been 50 to 60 unused seats both days so far,” Chertok said. “I know that people prefer to sit with who they want to sit with. If you and your friend are looking for a place to sit, and there’s two seats over here, and you don’t know anybody else at the table, that’s not a super comfortable situation to be in, and it’s a little awkward to walk down and just sit down and meet new people.”
Another reason for the change is from the previous requests of students trying to change their schedule due to a lack of friends in their lunch.
“The biggest complaint we get [is] from students schedule wise each year, and the reason for most are the biggest group of our schedule correction requests,” Chertok said. “It’s because [students] don’t have any friends at [their] lunch…by having more people at each lunch, I mean, effectively, we’ve only got two, so it’s half the schools at each lunch. The chances of you knowing at least one other person to be able to sit with and have lunch with goes up.”
Admin has also reported the lunch staff making more meals to compensate for the added students in each lunch period.
“The lunch line during the first lunch took five to six minutes to clear,” Raska said. “I had someone in first lunch time for me. And the lunch line for second lunch took around 10 minutes for everyone to be out of there. I timed that one myself. And that’s just too long. I mean, our lunch is only 30 minutes. If it takes a third of our lunch to just get your food, now you’re forced with so many seats [that] are full.”
Even if these students find seats, there may be disturbances to their lunch. These disturbances may involve students being sensitive to the increasingly loud commotions in the commons and the feeling of no space between them.
“A lot of my friends have issues when it’s really loud, and it’s really crowded, and they don’t feel safe and comfortable eating in the [commons],” Raska said. “That should be a pretty big concern for the school…we should feel protected, and we should feel comfortable in this building, and this is causing people to not feel that way.”
