Anonymous wrote:Probably, they have to get 1500-2000 students through lunch.

Only one middle school in the county approaches 1500 students

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah my elementary kids have lunch at 10:20. It’s insanely early. We’ve been eating lunch at 1pm all summer. I wish I’d known earlier and I could have adjusted that a bit. His teacher encourages a fruit or a vegetable as the snack and his after school care doesn’t allow food from home. I’m hoping he chows down at 10:20 so he can make it until 6pm dinner.

His aftercare doesn't allow food from home?! I'd ignore that and send a sandwich for 3pm.

Also, notwithstanding the teacher's encouraging fruit or a vegetable, you could send something with protein for the classroom snack. I.e. granola bar or peanut butter crackers or whatever.

Anonymous wrote:We’ll be headed to Eastern MS too. I recall one of the administrators telling us they serve “supper” at 3pm when school lets out for the kids staying for after school activities.

Yes, at Eastern, all the kids doing clubs on T/W/Th can get hot food in the cafeteria afterschool if they want it. Obviously, this doesn't work with after-school sports, but my kid also reported that students are generally allowed to eat during class (with a few exceptions, like science). So, extra snacks like a granola bar/crackers/fruit to eat later have worked for us in that instance.

For me it's more of a concern to have ES lunches at like 10:30 since there is no other opportunity to eat unless your kid's classroom teacher explicitly allows for an afternoon snack break. At our ES the younger kids have lunch at normal hours but the older kids (4th and 5th) have really early lunches. Also ES starts a lot later so having lunch an hour after arrival is kind of ridiculous. I definitely understand why this needs to happen - lots of kids to cycle through the cafeteria - but in that case I would hope that the school would be more flexible about allowing an opportunity to re-fuel in the afternoon.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had lunch at my hs at 10:40 am. It did feel early, but kids get out of school before COB hours so they can have a snack after school. My hs had 2000 students—like a pp pointed out, this happens when you have to get that many students through lunch.

Uh, build more schools so you don't have to do this?

What's wrong with society that people accept this crap. This wouldn't fly in Finland, a country with the best education in the world. The US is close to the bottom of OECD nations and people don't even care.

Take it up with voters. Montgomery County is so corrupt and mismanaged. Our politicians give away everything to developers who have over-developed the county. Plus there is a push for urbanization by our local political leaders. Yet voters keep voting for more of the same.

The school system is completely dysfunctional and the BOE doesn’t care about our kids at all.

So our schools are severely overcrowded and our kids suffer.

Anonymous wrote:I had lunch at my hs at 10:40 am. It did feel early, but kids get out of school before COB hours so they can have a snack after school. My hs had 2000 students—like a pp pointed out, this happens when you have to get that many students through lunch.

Uh, build more schools so you don't have to do this?

What's wrong with society that people accept this crap. This wouldn't fly in Finland, a country with the best education in the world. The US is close to the bottom of OECD nations and people don't even care.

The issue is that they start way too early.

Eastern is (or at least it was when my kid was there) severely overcrowded, and with two lunches the cafeteria was jam-packed and entirely unmanageable. Sometimes there weren’t enough seats for everyone.

The year my kid was a 6th grader, 2018, I think, they switched to 3 lunch periods to reduce the number of kids in the cafeteria at any given time. I gather it really helped reduce the behavior issues. My kid still avoided the cafeteria because of the noise, though.

Anonymous wrote:Probably, they have to get 1500-2000 students through lunch.

This. Our MS is large and my kid had the early lunch last year. It sucks.

But MCPS is too large and too crowded so our kids get stuck dealing with the consequences.

Anonymous wrote:Yeah my elementary kids have lunch at 10:20. It’s insanely early. We’ve been eating lunch at 1pm all summer. I wish I’d known earlier and I could have adjusted that a bit. His teacher encourages a fruit or a vegetable as the snack and his after school care doesn’t allow food from home. I’m hoping he chows down at 10:20 so he can make it until 6pm dinner.

His aftercare doesn't allow food from home?! I'd ignore that and send a sandwich for 3pm.

My DC gets done eating lunch at 12:45 but school is over at 2:15. DC arrived at school at 7 am. So, this lunch period has the opposite problem. With eating breakfast at 6am, it’s a long time to wait for that 12:15 lunch start. They are almost at dismissal.

It is an early lunch.

I’m sure they don’t have early lunches just for fun though. There are lots of factors that go into making a schedule.

The kids get used to it and if you’re concerned about afternoon hunger, pack snack they can eat in class. I found afternoon teachers will let kids have a non-messy snack in class. The teachers are understanding.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand early lunch. It seems like the last lunch served is 12:00. Why? Why not serve until 1:00? 10:15 is super early to start lunch.

As an adult I rarely eat before 2pm.

The last lunch served is not 12pm. And kids would have eaten breakfast between 6-7am. Cafeterias don’t expand as schools become overcrowded.

We’ll be headed to Eastern MS too. I recall one of the administrators telling us they serve “supper” at 3pm when school lets out for the kids staying for after school activities.

Better than 1 pm lunch, after having breakfast at 6 and school ending at 3.

Anonymous wrote:How do you know which lunch your kid has?

At our idle school each grade has a separate lunch time so you can tell by looking at the bell schedule.