Early into the 2022 school year, Principal McBride announced, over the intercom in 7th period, the plan for a new trial lunch period schedule.

At the beginning of the school year, there were two lunch periods taking place each day. There was the A lunch and the B lunch, the former taking place from 11:01 to 11:31 and the latter taking place from 12:36 to 1:06. As of Monday, October 24th, an experimental period of a new one lunch schedule was put in place. The new lunch takes place from 11:01 to 11:31. The trial period is to last throughout the week of the 31st. The decision will be assessed after the test run days and the permanent decision whether to keep the one lunch period or go back to the two lunch periods will be made. The lunch room schedule of the experimental week exchanges the multi-block lunch periods, as stated before, for a singular, equally long lunch period containing all GHS students. The hope for the new schedule is to minimize classroom disruptions. One lunch will help to avoid the lunchtime class distractions that occur with the two lunch schedule.

Multiple students, when questioned on their opinions, mentioned the topic of lunch lines. Of the people eating lunch during their period, there are mostly two categories. The first being people who bring food from their houses in their bags, sometimes utilizing lunchroom equipment such as microwaves and toasters to keep their food fresh, and others may wait in a lunch line and eat from the lunchroom. Multiple students have worried about the lunch line exceeding the room entirely and venturing into the hallway outside of the lunchroom. In an effort to avoid long lunch lines, the cafeteria personnel have set up an alternate location in the theater lobby (see photo) to purchase food.

Not everybody is against the idea though. Prior to the test runs, Maddy Rossi of the 9th grade class stated that she was “interested in seeing how this will turn out.” Multiple students afterwards expressed that they recognized both ups and downs of the idea, or that they were excited to be sitting with more of their friends. Laura Gordon, a GHS teacher, when asked for her opinion, gave her insight on the lunch periods for faculty instead of students, and stated that she feels there are positives and negatives for both the multi-period lunch and the single period lunch. 

As of November 14th, the decision has been made to remain with the new schedule of one lunch period.