Reply to TT trying to eliminate open lunch

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My concern is the Board discussion to mandate multiple period closed lunches. My kid is at Blair and enjoys the hour long lunch period - everyone has the same lunch period. They run clubs during lunch, students meet with teachers for academic support, watch movies in the theatre, play sports in the gyms, go the weight room, etc., and if not in a club or meeting with a teacher, the kids get to chill with friends for an hour. Since everyone has the same lunch period - they get to see all their friends. The students eat in the cafeteria, outside, in teacher's classrooms, and in the hallway table areas. If a multi-period lunch gets mandated, gone are the lunch clubs, the kids won't be able to hang in teacher's classrooms or eat in multiple places, and academic support will be more limited. Hopefully that was just a passing thought and not something that will actually be implemented.[/quote]

Several of the high-profile, gun-related safety incidents (such as the recent ones at Blake and Walter Johnson) have had open lunch as common denominator.

What you are describing, kids being able to eat in classrooms and have clubs meet during lunch, is not an Open Lunch policy. Many schools that have closed lunches allow for that.

The sticking point and why this topic is coming up now is on Open Lunch policies that allow kids to leave campus during lunch. The issues involved include:

- Complaints from local businesses about kids overwhelming those restaurants and businesses from a volume perspective
- Theft, violence and general disruption of those establishments
- Absenteeism, since many kids who leave for open lunch don't come back to school or don't come back to school on time
- Overall school safety since kids can bring things, like dangerous weapons, from outside the school into the school building when they come back

If you watch the BOE policy meeting and saw the vote and the tone of the discussion, you should know that this was not just a passing thought. Taylor is going to claw back open lunch from these schools.

The question is how will it be done?

1. The Board has the option of setting a clear and updated policy restricting the parameters under which open lunch is defined and allowed
2. Banning it completely (as PG County has done)
3. Rescinding the open lunch policy and leaving this area completely up to the Superintendent (in which case he will most certainly ban it)

For those who are passionate about preserving whatever positive aspects of Open Lunch you like, I'd encourage you to focus your time and energy on advocating for pathway 1, as that leaves the most opportunity for community engagement and involvement. The other two pathways are dead ends in that regard.[/quote]

Ok several things. 
1) the common denominator with the gun incidents isn’t open lunch. Blake doesn’t have open lunch and the other individual wasn’t a student. In the case of the Whitman one this week, that kid probably had the gun in his bag IN THE SCHOOL all morning prior to lunch. The common denominators include guns, teens, boys, history of disciplinary issues, often bad parents, etc.

2) how do you know if there are complaints from local businesses? Maybe local businesses like the revenue. Maybe they don’t. No one has asked them and you are just making assumptions.

3) absenteeism is relevant but again, it would be helpful to compare ACTUAL stats between schools with open lunch vs closed lunch. You are making a huge assumption with no data because no one has actually run the numbers and shared them.

4) overall school safety because kids can bring in weapons and things after lunch? Are you actually serious? You think they can’t bring things in and out during other times of the day? You think this applies to lots of students? The vast majority of students would never in a million years bring a weapon to school and getting rid of open lunch isn’t going to be the magic solution for the small subset of kids who don’t know better. [/quote]

I'm so tired of people in this thread refusing to read or watch the BOE policy meeting where this was discussed and instead make assumptions that I don't know what I'm talking about because I read and pay attention.

1) The reason why Blake is included is because yes, they have a closed lunch. But because Open or Closed Lunch are not defined in the current policy. That ambiguity creates gaps and loopholes like the one at Blake, where the principal allowed kids to go off campus to get lunch, so long as they came back and ate it in the parking lot. This gap, allowed for the fight and scuffle that happened in the parking lot. Also, the individual was a 19-year-old Blake graduate. He was there because as most 19 year olds do, he was visiting a friend who is currently a Blake student to smoke weed, eat and hang out during lunch.

2) In the BOE Policy Committee meeting, several board members said they receive complaints about kids overwhelming their establishments and/or stealing. This is not something I made up. You would know this if you watched and read.

3) I'm not making an assumption. Absenteeism was brought up as a concern by MCPS counsel and the Associate Superintendent Donna Redmond-Jones that principals have to deal with as a negative byproduct of allowing Open Lunch policies in those schools. I do agree, and board members agreed, that specific data in this regard would be useful.

4) Ok. That's your opinion. But why increase the risk by allowing kids off campus? Boardmember Brenda Wolff specific thinks the Open Lunch policy opens MCPS from a liability perspective in this regard and said so during the policy committee.[/quote]

I did watch the meeting.

1) if kids at Blake are smoking weed and getting into fights in the parking lot that is a disciplinary issue not an open lunch issue.

2) I saw that Zimmerman said she received some complaints of this type. I’d love to know how many. She probably receives complaints of every type under the sun. I’m doubtful local business owners would write to Natalie Zimmerman to express their personal thanks and happiness about the revenue they earn via student patrons so this “data” isn’t exactly compelling.

3) glad we can agree that actual data, which we don’t yet have, will tell the story here

4) I am not a lawyer but MCPS doesn’t seem to think it’s liable for anything that occurs on its own campus (see odessa Shannon incident) so it’s rich that Brenda Wolff is suddenly concerned about liability off campus

I’m actually not completely opposed to considering changes to open lunch. I AM opposed to just unilaterally deciding this, with no data and no process, because a cute little echo chamber of 3 people chatted about it over their own lunch. [/quote]

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