Reply to TT trying to eliminate open lunch

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[quote=Anonymous]As someone who works in a high school that currently has "closed" lunch but "one" lunch - it can work at any school, even those that are high enrollment.

Open lunch obviously has its advantages - decreases the stress on lunch lines and provides autonomy to students.

But there are many challenges and concerns with open lunch.

Inevitably, open lunch leads to an increase in tardiness to the period after lunch. Even with best intentions of getting back to school on time after leaving for lunch, there are numerous factors out of the students' control - traffic, longer lines than anticipated, etc. Our school - which does not have open lunch, but still has numerous students leaving campus for lunch - has a steady stream of students returning to campus late after going out to lunch.

Then there are the safety concerns. Things can happen to students in the community - traffic incidents, medical emergencies, fights, etc. The school has no idea who is not in the building and cannot support students once they leave campus. One of the students who provided public comment at a recent BOE meeting mentioned that when there was a safety incident in the building at B-CC during lunch, how great it was that most of the school was in the community and was safe from the incident. However, the student didn't realize he was making a point about the challenge this creates for the school - not knowing which students are in the building and which students are in the community during lunch - during a potential safety incident when accurate attendance is important.

For sure, every campus is different. Different cafeteria sizes. Different access to community food options. Different access to self-transport options (more/less student drivers).

But every high school can successfully navigate a closed, one lunch solution regardless of the size of the cafeteria. Most students find a classroom for eating lunch.

However, I am strongly against going back to multiple lunch periods after seeing the benefits of one lunch. Students have access to teachers during a one lunch period for help, making up work, meeting for clubs, interest meetings, etc. One lunch is awesome. Having started my career at a school with multiple lunch periods... we spent the entire lunch periods trying to keep students in the cafeteria (and keep students from going from classes to the cafeteria). With the way schools are these days with no attendance policy and the hallways being packed during class times, and no consequences for anything... if we go back to multiple lunches, it will be a disaster. [/quote]

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