By: Christopher Pappas
Before beginning this article, reader, I would ask you to participate in a survey to help mathematically evaluate the new lunch system: http://tinyurl.com/yc9896dm.
Beginning in the 2017-2018 school year, many OCPS district facilities have converted to a new style of schedule. Students now arrive ten minutes later and leave fifteen minutes earlier than in the 2016- 2017 school year. The most impacting change as a part of this, however, deals with the lunch program. The original system had three lunch shifts, each twenty-five minutes long — the minimum length of a lunch period, though this seems to be loosely defined. According to Health Education and Setting Nutrition Education Goals, OCPS’s Local School Wellness Policy “Students will be allowed at least ten (10) minutes to eat meals after they have received and checked out the point of sale lunchroom.”
The new system, having begun this year at AHS, grants students thirty-minute lunches (an additional five minutes) in exchange for slashing one of the three lunch shifts. The anticipated overcrowding of the cafeteria was compensated by allowing students to eat lunch across the entirety of the courtyard and installing several portable “food carts.”
There have been several shortcomings in this reform, however. For one, seating is very limited outside. There are some benches near the cafeteria area, which are lovely, but they are all basking in the noonday sun. Similarly, the low walls snaking across the courtyard are usually frequented by ants and also suffer from being in the full sun. There are covered areas, but it lacks seating and it’s already technically a walk-way—not the sort of place you’d sit. Some of the best locations for seating are the staircases adjacent to the 400, 500, and 600 buildings. They allow you sit rather comfortably, offer a decent amount of shade, and are usually exposed to more breezes.
That seems like a great idea, right? Wrong. Administrators patrol these staircases and prevent students from using them as seating, even if they sit in full view at the bottom and don’t block the walkway in the first place!
If you can’t eat in the cafeteria or the stairs, and you don’t want to bake on the benches, where else are you to eat? Classrooms are, naturally, the next place many students find themselves eating. But yet again, access to them is limited. Although Principal Arnold now allows teachers to use their discretion over whether or not students are allowed to eat in their classrooms, students are still restricted from getting to most of their classes anyways. Why? Because access to them (via the aforementioned staircases) is blocked (by the aforementioned administrators)!
May I pose a question to Principal Arnold: Is it unreasonable to allow students free roaming, at least to the main building block? I understand restricting movement to the parking lot and those regions, because we students have a tendency toward shenanigans away from supervision. That being said, though, the 400-600 building block is very well supervised. Every hallway has several teachers at pretty much all times during the school day, not to mention the CCTV cameras inside and outside every hall.
“But students will go to the fire lane,” I hear you cry. This has been a common and rather strange pet peeve of the administration this year and I can understand why—to a degree. The official reason, as I surmise, is that students may be blocking said fire lane, which I find absurd. If, for whatever reason, emergency vehicles need to get here, it would be rather obvious to any stationed hooligans; even a human wall would part for an ambulance. Though supervision of the fire lane is much more lightweight, teachers can still hear anything happening from their classrooms positioned adjacent to the area. You also have to account for the surveillance cameras, once again deterring any potential tomfoolery.
Please know that I’m not asking for the District to come out and construct benches, sun shades, and hire more administrators while there are schools who need basic supplies and funding. What I am asking is that we let the spirit of common sense prevail and allow the student body some freedom in where and how we eat so we aren’t miserable in the September heat, the winter chill, or the November and April rain. Lastly, if you refuse to grant us this, please tell us why.