By Nicole Falco
Approved during last year's budget process and implemented this fall at North and South high schools and Memorial Junior High School, the program requires seventh-grade students to remain in school during their lunch period. All other students still have the option of dining in or out.
With one goal achieved, the district is already getting started on a second one. This year's proposed budget will include an allocation of $66,000 for the purpose of expanding the closed-lunch program to include the eighth grade starting next fall.
"We are putting it into the budget for next year," said Dr. Ronald Valenti, superintendent of schools. "If the Board [of Education] adopts the budget and the voters approve the budget it's a done deal."
Safety was cited as the number-one reason for keeping students in during lunch. In order to make a closed lunch possible, the district revamped the quality and variety of food offered in its cafeterias and assigned additional lunchroom supervisory aides during each of three lunch periods.
If eighth-graders are kept in next year, the number of students eating in will essentially double. There are approximately 800 seventh-graders in three schools. (Central High is a 10th-through-12th-grade school.) To accommodate the eighth-graders, a fourth lunch period will be added as well as additional supervisory aides.
"It's not right that every year it keeps moving up a grade," said Joe Azzato, a South seventh-grade student. "It's seventh grade now, next eighth. Then it'll probably be ninth grade."
While some seventh-graders wonder whether they'll ever be allowed off campus for lunch, teachers, administrators and even some students say the program is going well. "Given the fact that there were no guidelines, it was experimental, everyone involved has done well," said Dr. Kathleen Cairo, Memorial's principal.
In each school, supervisory aides take attendance at the beginning of the 40-minute lunch period. Depending on the time a student arrives in the cafeteria, the wait on the lunch line can take 10 to 15 minutes, according to students. Food selections include French fries (a favorite), pizza, cold sandwiches, salads, wraps and snacks. Students' opinions about the food vary from "good" to "fair" to "poor," but most say they at least have enough time to eat.
Students are permitted to walk from table to table to talk with friends, but they must sit down once they are at a table. They can obtain passes for the library or computer lab. Also in each school, seventh-graders are separated from other students in the cafeteria.
"The reality is I can't have them walking around the cafeteria because I need to see where they are," said Ginger Calderaro, a South English teacher and lunch supervisor.
At South, students have a box full of board games they can use. North and Memorial are looking into similar distractions, but the majority of students -- even five months into the school year -- say they'd like to go outside, and call having to stay in unfair. "In the winter I think we should stay in, but in the [spring] I think we should be able to go out," said Memorial's Sherifa Adams. "I think it's good that we stay in for our own safety, but we should also get to go out sometimes."
According to Valenti, the district is looking into the possibility of allowing seventh-grade students, and possibly eighth-graders next year, outside, but only on school grounds. "The only issue we are still trying to resolve is if we can provide some recreational experiences for the students after they finish their lunch, particularly for the spring," Valenti said. "Nobody is interested in going outdoors these days."
Walter Bachman, a North history teacher and lunch supervisor, looks on the bright side of the in-or-out debate, noting that the school does have air conditioning. "At this stage in the game there are a lot of positives," Bachman said. "Number one, we know they are all here . . . I think kids are a lot safer here with all the nonsense going on today that you read in the newspaper."
