Reply to Why do some high schools allow open lunch and others do not

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Einstein High School has a closed campus rule but the [b]principal, Mark Brown, has stated that he will not enforce the rule.[/b] 
As someone who lives near the school, I can tell you our neighborhood has been negatively affected. 
Besides picking up trash every school day, I have photos of fights, drug use, drug deals and one student displaying a knife! I have passed these photos on to the principal and the BOE. Neither has done anything. 
There are also those students roaming around after lunchtime and throughout the day. Einstein is a magnet school and very few, if any, of these kids live in the neighborhood. [/quote]

I don't understand why MCPS gives principals this kind of latitude.

The truth is, Open Lunch has NEVER worked. Yes, there are some kids who do what they're supposed to do but the reality is, there will always be that minority of kids who abuse the privilege and ruin it for everybody. It was that way in '90s and it remains that way now.

So closed lunch IS the best way forward. But MCPS should look to partner with food vendors to have them do pop-ups to let kids buy the food INSIDE the school that they would buy outside. We have to stop pouring the money we pour into cafeteria food that the kids hate because it's tasteless, spoiled, or undesirable for whatever reasons. It's time for MCPS to innovate. Maybe MCPS should outsource cafeteria operations to a vendor completely. But the existing model isn't working for kids.[/quote]

Many kids cannot afford that.  [/quote]

But many can. They’re ordering UberEats and DoorDash to school now, where there are closed lunches. And the schools that have open lunches, the kids are going to those restaurants and shops and buying. Bring those shops to the school instead of having the kids go to them.[/quote]

It’s far easier to maintain a successful six decade run of open campus. Even DCPS has open campus. No large constituency is calling for an end to open campus.

Regarding the above idea to bring trendy food options to a closed campus school, no district is going to team up with local fast food. Why waste the effort for limited return. There are likely legal issues involved as well, unless the district actually partners with a specific brand or vendor for a specific reason.

Both public schools and the students benefit from open campus which is why it’s not going away any time soon. [/quote]

What are criteria are you using to claim the existing open campus policy is "successful"?

Again, as an MCPS student in the 90s, the issues people complain about with open campus lunches today are the same ones we had back in the day:

1) Kids leaving school for lunch and not returning for the rest of the school day
2) Fights/drugs off-campus (used to be far more concerned about cigarette smoking back then versus weed)
3) Theft and disorderly conduct in shops and restaurants

The question is: How much of these inevitable and unavoidable negative tradeoffs is the school and the surrounding community willing to accept in exchange for the economic activity or the perceived satisfaction of the parents or students who think open lunch is a positive experience? You apparently believe there's no floor. The store and restaurant owners disagree with you and many parents, who do not want their kids to be harmed as unsupervised and unruly teens target, bully or introduce their kids to high-risk behaviors, support a closed campus over an open campus.

It seems the volume of these kids of incidents has increased to extent that many schools have done the cost-benefit analysis and decided it's not worth it. That is just my gut feeling. It would be good if MCPS was transparent though and released that kind of data and set official guidelines that would be consistent so that students and parents understand at what level of incident reports open lunch is no longer an option for that school.[/quote]

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