Students enjoy lunch in the cafeteria.
by Noah Housman and Declan Lusk
This year at Brevard High School, the traditional lunch schedule has been altered, causing widespread debate amongst students and faculty.
The old lunch schedule gave students two 30-minute lunch periods. During said periods, students were allowed to choose to visit the cafeteria and eat lunch in designated areas or attend a tutoring session or club with a teacher. The new lunch schedule still utilizes the A and B lunches; however, now students are required to see their teachers during one of the lunch periods based on the teacher’s last name, and eat during the other.
“There was a supervision issue where over 700 kids had lunch at once. Some were taking advantage of it. Others were not,” said assistant principal Allen Credle.
The new lunch schedule still utilizes the A and B lunches; however, student choice is restricted to Friday’s “PRIDE” days. Monday through Thursday, students must attend a tutorial with one teacher each day. Students go to their first period on Mondays, second period on Tuesdays, and so on.
Not everyone is excited about the change.
“I personally enjoyed the original SMART lunch more, because it gave me more opportunities for clubs, and let me take my education into my own hands,” said junior August Barham. “I can see how for some students it might not be as useful, but for me personally, the old schedule worked better.”
Most students interviewed agreed with Barham in terms of their growing pains because of the new schedule.
Students are not the only ones being affected; teachers have also been adjusting to the changes.
The benefits of the new schedule include students having mandatory meetings with their teachers, which has helped the tutorial attendance rate, but it has not necessarily helped everybody. If a teacher needs a student to come in to catch up on work or to have more individual tutoring, the student would have to wait until their designated day. This specific day may not cooperate with assessments and deadlines which the students needs to catch up on.
The new schedule does allow students to choose what they do for lunch on Fridays.
“Friday will be our first test to see how it goes, where you can choose to go to clubs, intramurals, or tutoring,” said Credle. “If everything goes well–students clean up after themselves, and use the time productively, I see the possibility of expanding it. We’ll take a look and see how many students actually take advantage of it. If it becomes an hour of free time, we may have to look at it more along the lines of what we have now.”
Students are being given the power to choose, but they will have to use that power responsibly.