Bellevue West has experimented with three to four lunch periods in past years. However, a two period lunch schedule is being implemented this year.
“We’ve heard from staff for a long time that if you get that middle lunch [with a three period schedule], it’s very disruptive to that class period and they’ve never liked it,” Principal Kevin Rohlfs said.
Many students also may have noticed that their passing periods are shorter. According to Rohlfs, this was done to allow for lunch periods to be stretched from 30 minutes to 40 minutes per period. However, these changes to the lunch schedule are not the only new thing pertaining to lunch time this year.
Off-campus lunch is something that many seniors look forward to every year, but not every senior was able to take advantage of it. In order to be eligible for off-campus lunch, seniors had to meet the state benchmarks on the ACT.
To the delight of many seniors, Bellevue West has changed these requirements. Seniors must now have a minimum GPA of 2.0 and have no major discipline infractions. This opened the gates for many more seniors to take advantage of off-campus lunch: however, there are restrictions about bringing off-campus food inside.
“Federal law states that during lunch, as well as 30 minutes before school and 30 minutes after school, you can’t have fast food because it competes with the school lunch program, so that’s a federal law that’s in place that we have to follow,” dean Ayla Vargas said.
Despite these restrictions, numerous seniors go out for lunch every day, which is evident by the traffic in the streets and parking lot during lunch. But traffic isn’t exclusive to just the streets: it is also a problem in the cafeteria, and students may tend to either skip the line or not eat lunch at all.
“Currently, we are making a lot more [food] because we don’t want to run out, but then we tend to have a lot of leftovers because the kids don’t want to wait in line,” cafeteria manager Kelly Hooker-Picht said. “So I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”
According to Hooker-Picht, this inattentiveness makes the lines move slower, which in turn, makes the lines longer. Students also tend to wait for the server to list the items available for
lunch instead of knowing what they want.
“I do gotta give all the credit in the world to our kitchen staff, they have stepped up to the plate…they’re doing a great job in the kitchen getting the food served up quickly, and are giving students a more relaxing lunch.”
