When at lunch I would rather...

• see more chairs and tables. (56%, 24 Votes)
• see the line go faster. (30%, 13 Votes)
• be allowed to enter or exit from either side. (14%, 6 Votes)

Total Voters: 43

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Lunch times are different this year, and that means new problems that go with the new schedule. DC Time has been moved to between first and second block because of attendance problems.  “When DC Time was after third block, we had a lot of issues, because after lunch is already such a big transition time,” says Principal Jon Flynn. This means that lunch had to be moved to second block, causing A lunch to start at 10:40. “We had to make a decision between eating at just before 11:00 or eating after 2:00, and we thought eating early was a better option.”

However, eating this early gives students up to five hours between the end of lunch and the end of school, which means that by the end of the day, many of them are practically starving. Being hungry can make it hard to concentrate in class, impacting student’s learning. According to Sibylle Kranz, a registered dietitian nutritionist at the UVA Curry School of Education and Human Development, “children who are hungry are not able to focus, so they have a low attention span, behavioral issues, and discipline issues in school.”

Another problem is that D lunch is absolutely packed, so some students must stand or sit on the floor. Freshman Michelle Sass said, “I don’t like standing because my feet hurt because I just got out of gym so I get kind of frustrated.” Because there are so many students in the lunchroom, the lunch line is very long, giving some students only a few minutes to eat before they have to dash off to class.

Entering and exiting has become a problem as well, with the procedures changed a week into school. In the first week of school, students had to enter on the east side of the cafeteria and exit on the west, but after that students were able to choose where they entered and exited. These rule changes were not widely publicized, confusing some students. Students are also trapped in the cafeteria by locked gates until lunch ends, creating huge crowds of people trying to get out of the cafeteria and up the stairs. Wednesdays make it even more complicated because there is no DC time, which means second and third block must be switched to keep lunch later in the day. Lunch should be a relaxing time to recharge before the rest of the day, but with all of these problems, it is just a mess.