New lunch schedule in the works
For the next few weeks, a schedule with only two lunches will be implemented.
November 27, 2018
Principal Gregg Shoultz announced Tuesday afternoon to teachers that a trial run of two lunches, rather than three, will be held during school in the weeks to come.
Currently, classes are assigned to either A, B or C lunch according to which floor their fourth period class is on. Under the new lunch schedule, B lunch will be eliminated. Those assigned to B lunch previously will now change to A lunch beginning on Wednesday, Nov. 28.
“The class is split because of B lunch. [Students] only get 45 minutes of learning time, and because they’re split in the middle, the teacher has to start class twice, so they are missing out on educational time,” Shoultz said.
Time will not be added to lunch periods and the bell schedule will not be changed in any other way. There may be switches of lunch assignments for classes in the future in order to balance lunch shifts, and during this process, there will be overflow seating in the main gym foyer. Students are still encouraged to eat their lunch in classrooms after they get lunch from the cafeteria.
“For the first time ever we are smaller; we used to have 2,100 kids and now we have 1,525 and we have a new cafeteria,” said Shoultz. “The cafeteria staff has figured out how to be optimal, the students have figured it out, so we think it’s time now to give it a try.”
Due to weather conditions, the school district had a two hour late-start on Monday. This created an accidental trial run of this new lunch system, where A and B lunches were combined to fit the shortened day shortened day schedule. However, there will be 5 fewer minutes allotted for lunch than what occurred Monday.
“The cafeteria staff is hardworking, but they’re very skeptical,” Shoultz said. “They’re very worried about if we have kids going to class late because they’re not making it through the lunch line, then we’ll have to go back to B.”
