Reply to TT trying to eliminate open lunch

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[quote=Anonymous][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]

You mistakenly reference the Blake incident as being related to open lunch.  Blake High School has and always has had a closed lunch policy.  Kids leave the building whether or not lunch is technically open or closed. [/quote]

Wasn't the Blake incident in the school's parking lot? If so, still on school property.[/quote]

The Blake incident was in the parking lot during CLOSED lunch.  Blake has a CLOSED lunch policy, meaning they are supposed to eat inside the building.  Realistically, they leave the building to eat in the parking lot, the area surrounding the school, and those with cars often leave to go to local restaurants.

The same is true at Blair, where very large numbers of students leave CLOSED lunch to peruse the neighborhood and eat at local restaurants.

These schools aren't policing CLOSED lunch anyway, and incidents have been occurring in various places and circumstances.  So why are we focusing on eliminating open lunch.  As others have said, it isn't open lunch that is the problem.  [/quote]

The reason for this ambiguity is because neither Open or Closed Lunch are defined. The Policy Committee is tasked with solving that problem of defining it and the parameters, banning it or letting the Superintendent define it.[/quote]

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