Written By: Jonathan Viene, Staff Writer, and Sam Reed, Staff Writer in Training
OVERCROWDING: The new two-lunch policy has not received raving reviews from students.
To the dismay of many Poly High students, when they first checked their Aeries app this school year, they realized that they and their friends would be assigned separate lunches. A well-intentioned policy put forth by the administration last March has proven to be extremely unpopular with the student body, putting the two at odds. Many students simply wonder: Why?
For context, it has not always been like this. For the entirety of Poly High’s history, students have been able to enjoy the simplicity of a single lunch, with all of their friends, anywhere on campus, after fourth period. However, an outbreak of fights last year – significant enough to reach local headlines -forced the school board and Mr. Hansen to re-evaluate the ways students move around campus. In the process of their review, they quickly focussed on student safety as their chief responsibility, and realized the entire campus could not be adequately supervised with so many students roaming the campus all at one.
While initially implemented as a proactive safety measure to remedy the chaotic environment that week, the administration began to weigh its viability as a permanent fixture in the schedule. Mr. Hansen met with the school board, with school officials, and even a council of (now former) seniors, who first voiced the concerns of today’s students who wanted to spend their last lunches with their friends. What they found was that for a school of Poly’s size, the two-lunch system would bring new logistical flexibility that would ultimately improve student life.
Now, Mr. Hansen understands that his decision is not popular among students. In fact, in a survey of Poly students, over 91% of respondents indicated that they did not like the new system. And, of the 9% who said yes, all were freshmen who had not experienced the old system. However, he urges those concerned to focus on the “big picture” of the policy: more students eating lunch, less crowding on campus, a safer environment, and room to improve quality of life.
We have indeed seen many of those well-intentioned goals manifest in this school year. According to Mr. Hansen, 150-200 more students are eating lunch. “That’s massive.” Additionally, the increased presence of supervisors and restrictions on where students can go during lunch has integrated well with the division of students and has worked to answer the original concerns of parents and students alike, proving effective in quelling the outbreak of fights.
What may be most important, though, is what’s next. Mr. Hansen wants students to “know that the school is not done making changes.” According to Mr. Hansen, finding ways to make lunch more enjoyable is at the top of his agenda. He wants to make lunch more than simply “go outside and eat.” Right now, he is working on increasing the amount of shade around campus amid the hottest months of summer. And, he hinted at games like cornhole being put in around the quad, and finding ways to foster high club participation around campus.
Mr. Hansen believes that this will leave Poly much better off than where we were a year ago. He made clear that as the school expands, the two-lunch system will be here to stay. While it may be a difficult adjustment, the school wants to make the most of this necessary change.