40 minutes. 

40 minutes of sweating, stressing, and sprinting.

Students are given this short window to rush up or down the stairs, walk a dreaded half mile to the student parking lot, leave in traffic, get food, and rush back. Also, If you don’t think ahead and pre-order for a curbside pickup (which some places don’t do) you have to consider the drive-thru traffic. After all calculations, it is reasonable to conclude that we have only about 5 minutes maximum minutes of wiggle room. The time restrictions are going to cause students accidents, tardies, or possibly inspire kids to just skip the 2nd half of the day.

Most of us are also not used to in-person school and it’s hard to be in class for so long without breaks. The online school allowed students to relax and take care of their mental health. Now, it feels that Green Level has rushed us back into the schedule we had pre-covid. Lunch is our only time to breathe and refresh after having almost all day to do so for over a year. Please be considerate and understand our need to take a longer break.

Junior Abby Triandiflou, a brand new student to Green Level, is already wishing that she had more time for lunch. She doesn’t drive yet but has an off-campus lunch pass to go with friends. She is getting quite annoyed because all of her friends are stressed and worried about the time limit. She has also said, “40 minutes isn’t even a lot of time if you want to eat lunch in the cafeteria, and I can’t even imagine the people who get lunch in the lunch line, because after waiting all that time they probably only have like 15 minutes.” The 40 minutes is an obvious problem school-wide, not just for off-campus students. 

The Gators Eye also did a poll using student’s opinions, the vast majority answered with the cursing emoji… pretty accurate representation of our feelings.

Anyway, we all know that students feel that we need more time but what about the teachers?

Relating to the students, teachers mentioned that if kids are going to be consistently late to class then something will need to change. “If it’s just one or two students, then they didn’t do good time management and that’s on them, but if consistently people are late and it’s all across the board then it’s not the students’ fault it’s the fact that they simply do not have enough time.” Additionally, teachers are required to have lunch duty three days a week. This means the amount of time teachers get on their respective duty days is 20 minutes or less, depending on the location where they are assigned.

I also took some time to get to know other schools’ lunch schedules. The school most comparable, Panther Creek, has about an hour, then 6 minutes to get to their class. A Graduating Senior from Panther Creek says, “Panther Creek is lucky because we have a lot of food options right around the corner, it’s only about 4 minutes to Parkside Commons. So we would have time to go and get food and come back.” Also at Panther Creek, some days there would be class lunch and a student from PC would drive to CookOut and get a huge order and the class would all share. This was their “far away” trip, if students at other schools have time to drive 15 minutes down the road and order for a whole class, come back, eat and still have time to get to their class, then Green Level students should be allowed to go to the closest off-campus spot and not have to be rushed. 

We aren’t asking for an unreasonable amount of time, we just are asking for some grace. You have to understand that the closest thing to Green Level is Beaver Creek shopping center. That is still 8 minutes away. We are asking you to rethink our lunchtime. Most students find it completely unfair that other schools have longer lunches. 

We are not being selfish but going back to school after almost two years at home is difficult. Lunch is our only time to relax and take a break. 40 minutes is not nearly enough time.