Lunch is optional in today’s high school in the Lower Hudson Valley

By David McKay Wilson
The Journal News
(Original Publication: November 29, 2006)

There was a time in the not so distant past when high school students could depend on lunch to eat with their chums and take a breather. But in today’s Lower Hudson Valley high schools, lunch is literally on the table. For many students, the traditional midday meal is an option that often gets jettisoned as they cram their schedules with one more elective or extracurricular activity.

Students cope by grabbing snacks, eating between courses or having their tuna-on-rye while in class.

At Horace Greeley High in Chappaqua, for example, scores of students take eight classes during the eight-period day and have no time set aside for lunch. Others have free periods in their rotating schedules, but that break may be as early as 7:45 a.m. or as late as 1:45 p.m.

Andrew Mirabile, a 15-year-old sophomore at Horace Greeley, doesn’t have a lunch break three days a week. On those days he eats a big breakfast, and may grab a bag of chips from a vending machine.

“I’ve adapted,” Mirabile said. “I have a big lunch when I get home.”

At North Rockland High, several students eating one recent day recalled taking eight subjects, which meant they had no lunch. Others, like Fabbianna Louis, 17, wondered how she’d manage in the spring when she takes Child Development II and Advanced Computers for College and without a lunch break.

“I don’t know how I”m going to do it,” she said. “It’s going to be crazy.”

At a time when schools are working to provide healthier cafeteria food, high-achieving students scramble to find time to eat it. In addition, a space crunch in many cafeterias means some students who have time for lunch have it assigned as early as 10 a.m., while others don’t eat until after 1 p.m.

School administrators say the lunchless day for teens is a sign of the times: students are taking advantage of the myriad academic offerings.

“It’s their choice,” North Rockland Assistant Principal Steven Riback said. “It may be their only way to graduate, or they may want a certain class. The kids and their parents are aware of it.”

Critics, though, say schools are wrong to set up class schedules that let students go all day without a break or force them to eat in class.

Chappaqua parent Susan Rubin, a dentist and holistic health professional, said schools are teaching poor eating habits by not requiring time for lunch and letting students eat in a relaxed setting.

“We are creating unhealthy habits that last a lifetime,” said Rubin, who is waging a national campaign through an organization called Two Angry Moms to improve school food. “It sends the message that food doesn’t matter, that it’s not something we need to concern ourselves with.”

Rye parent Susan Keating, who has three teens at Rye High, said her children try to balance their nutritional needs with their academic pursuits and the high school schedule. One child has lunch at 10:15 a.m., another at 1 p.m. while her daughter, Liz, a senior she calls an “overachiever,” is taking five Advanced Placement courses, an English elective and chorus. Her daughter hasn’t had a scheduled lunch for two years.

“We’ve made lunch optional for them,” Keating said. “Kids today will be taking their laptops on vacation because they can fit it in.”

According to state law, schools are required to “schedule a reasonable time for each full-day pupil attending pre-kindergarten through grade 12 to consume lunch.”

That means that a school district, on its own, can’t schedule a student out of lunch, said Department of Education spokesman Jonathan Burman. He declined to say whether lunch at 7:45 a.m. qualified as a “reasonable time.” He added that eating during class gives students the opportunity to consume lunch during school hours.

“The school must give that student sufficient time every day to eat at his desk during class,” Burman said.

Finding time for lunch is an issue at many high schools. At Walter Panas High in Cortlandt, students who fill all eight periods with academics qualify for a permanent hall pass that lets them leave class a few minutes early to grab food in the cafeteria to eat in their next class or in the hallway on the way. Panas Principal Susan Strauss said she doesn’t recommend the practice, but her staff works with students who decide to do it.

“We know that working on no calories produces less than satisfactory results,” she said. “We make a point of letting them know about nutritional information. School counselors meet with students too and tell them they need to keep their energy levels up.”

At Greeley, educators are considering a new schedule that would make sure that every student had a lunch period every day, Principal Andrew Selesnick said. He estimated that “a couple hundred” of Greeley’s 1,300 students didn’t have a lunch period. Such a change, however, would allow for fewer options for the school’s ambitious students.

“We are looking to see if it would make more sense to have a block of time and call it lunch,” Selesnick said. “But it’s somewhat complicated.”

Some schools have responded to the lunch crunch by extending cafeteria hours.

At Rye High, parents this year raised $100,000 to refurbish the school cafeteria. As part of the deal, school officials agreed to extend cafeteria hours past school closing at 2:38 p.m., so students who ate at 10:15 a.m. could have another meal before their sports practice and those who had yet to eat could have a sandwich before they participated in an afterschool program.

“If your child eats at 10:15, he’s running on empty by 3,” said Keating, who led the fund-raising effort. “In the past, kids were eating three bags of Doritos and running out to work out. That didn’t seem right.”