Monday, May 16, 2016

It’s just not big enough: Two lunches next year

Amanda Horak & Sabrina Bilotta
Staff Writers

  There will be two lunch blocks next year, the first at 10:15 a.m. and the second at 11:00 a.m. Students will be randomly divided into the two blocks. This is similar to the 2012-13 school year, when the current seniors were freshmen, and there were two lunch blocks; at that time, the first block was much smaller than the second.
 With this change, you might not be able to talk to your friends during the one time of day that you are allowed to freely, because you might not have lunch at the same time as them.
  According to Mrs. Nealis, the reason why separate lunches are going to happen next year is because the freshman class coming up is bigger, and there will not be enough room in the cafeterias.
  This change is not predicted to interfere with the student class scheduling process.
  Mr. Seier said that there are going to be approximately 530 students in the high school next year.  There is room for 220 students per cafeteria, so 530 students cannot fit all at once.  The board policy says that students have to be provided with a safe place to eat even if they would prefer to eat elsewhere in the school or outside.
  This lunch divide will not affect the middle school, and they will still have lunch at 11:45, as they do now.  At 10:15 the high school cafeteria will be filled with all freshmen and some sophomores. Then, the remaining sophomores will have lunch at the usual 11 a.m. time slot along with the juniors and seniors.