Open campus lunch has its pros and its cons. The pros of this include things like giving high school students the chance to stretch their legs. It can also teach valuable life skills such as conserving money and spending it wisely. The only issue that can be present that I can think of is the current debt that the school district is in. This being said the school would lose more money with this open campus lunch. Mainly because the school lunches will not be bought by students.
The local businesses will be getting the money, and the school might lose money. If the school doesn’t have to pay for the lunches or pay additional lunch ladies they could potentially save more money than we are currently spending. Currently my opinion on the school lunches are that they are ridiculously overpriced. For one cookie in our lunch room it is around 85 cents, but if you were to go a restaurant that same cookie could be around 30 cents. This would also save students money and give them the chance to buy higher quality food products.
The thing that needs to be done is we would have to either lengthen the lunch period from around 22 minutes to possibly a full period, because it will take students longer to get to and from school. The school would have to also allow students to enter through other doors. This is potentially dangerous. The district would need to make it so there would either be teachers or a staff member at a door during the specified lunch hour so that students would have to sign into the school and sign out as well. This will also allow the student to go to their house and possibly get their lunch there.
The students would also be able to grab any items they had forgotten too instead of having a parent/guardian drop it off. The other thing would be safety for the school. The school would have to be extremely cautious towards the things students bring in and take out. So by suggesting that there would be a way to check the backpacks of the students, but make a permission slip that only allows the student to leave the building for open campus lunch if they get their bag checked upon entering and leaving the building. This would reduce the chance of any dangerous things such as a active shooter from happening.
The school should think about adding a option for open campus lunch as there are many things that would benefit the students and the staff at the school. This would only make sense if this was for the higher grades such as junior or senior because most students are able to drive at that age. Students would then be able to transport themselves instead of having someone else dive them or having to walk. In the long run having an open campus lunch would be extremely beneficial in some ways but conflicting in less ways.
Student Publication of Oswego High School, Oswego, IL
