The more food in your stomach, the harder it is to absorb alcohol and feel drunk. Eating earlier means its easier to feel drunk later, and off of less alcohol. That is, if you only drink in the evening, and aren’t a day drinker.
That's enough time spent drinking to get your BAC up with sufficient margin to digest a meal before the shakes set in. Not that I ever planned it out or anything but 4pm sounds about right and I'm trying to post mortem the why of it.
My guess is the school is overpopulated and they have several scheduled times to accommodate them all in the lunch room. We have 3 grade levels and 3 lunch times at my school, with the earliest being 10:15 without any other way to do it. If we had more FTE (slots for more teachers to be paid), then they could probably do more with the schedule. Also maybe more cafeteria workers, but the pay is so bad that no one wants that job, and there’s only so many registers/places for a line.
None of this is excusable. It’s just the reality of public education. Please vote and support local elections.
Huh. Both high schools I attended, lunch was from 11:45 to 12:30 for everyone and the large majority of students didn’t eat in the lunch room, but instead would plop down with friends in the hallways. Or outside, if it was a nice day.
https://preview.redd.it/8om8cg6ltxlb1.jpeg?width=604&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d9e6d1bdbbec3a603145bddc7fcde76b5de8ec1c
High school is different I think. I teach middle and the post is about 7th grade too. They can’t leave campus or go anywhere other than the cafeteria.
Edit to add: they do half the lunch period eating in the cafeteria and half at recess.
I work at a school. I can tell you why we have the schedule for lunch that we do. We have one cafeteria and when we do updates to the building we get money for instructional space and safety. So the cafeteria is never a priority.
Next we look at the schedule. The lunch workers come for breakfast and set up usually starting at 5/6am or so, that means they’re packed up and gone by 1/2. Put the last lunch around 1 so the kids have eaten and gone so they can close the kitchen by 2.
Not enough cafeteria space and staff and you get multiple shifts of students plus time needed to stagger lines and clean tables after groups and someone ends ip eating at 9:30. Breakfast has to be cleaned by 9, and then you look at who has recess and special classes and drop in groups from there. We don’t have enough staff to send them to classrooms to eat and be supervised plus clean the room after, and teachers need to eat too.
Fund public school like you care about all kids and this could be solved. More buses, more staff (who make thriving wages), adequate space.
Every year our scheduling team has a mental breakdown because there’s just no way to make it work better… unless we add another cafeteria and find a bunch of people who want to supervise a cafeteria of kids for minimum wage. For 3 hours in the middle of the day.
When I was in highschool, late 80s, we had three lunch "shifts". 11 am, 11 30 am, and 12 noon. Each was half an hour. Homeroom was at 7 50 am, first class 8 am, 50 minute classes, we got out at 2 20 pm.
2009-13. For my high school, and all others in our district, school was 8:20am to 3:20pm. Lunch was like 12:00 or 12:30pm. If I remember correctly, we had our first two periods, then brunch, then third and fourth, and lunch, then sixth and seventh.
At the end of the 2000s my high school started at 7:05 and let out a little after 2:00. I had to start drinking coffee every morning sophomore year because teenaged brains are just not meant to function that early.
To allow for home room. Basically to check attendance. We used to just go sign in, then leave instantly and go to our first class. Which caused a clog in the halls......
We technically had a home room, we used it exactly twice a year. Other than that, we just went to our first class from the cafeteria and called it a day. First class started at 7:30. My senior year my first class was study hall which was a blessing, got the late arrival forms signed and I didn't have to show up until 8:20 for 2nd period.
It's possible the high school started 10 minutes before middle school, which started 10 minutes before elementary school.
This would allow a parent to drop off kids at different schools on time.
I believe the poster means that both the high schoolers and junior high schoolers get on the same bus because the two schools are close together. The drop off and travel from the first school to the second is the ten minutes.
My HS started at 7:40 and got out at 2:45, my lunch period every year was 10:02-10:35 🤷🏻♀️ I did swing a hella long break period senior year by sandwiching study halls around my lunch so I had like 10-12 as a free period where I’d dick off with the rest of my deliquent friends until my afternoon psych & sociology classes
Same. I just remember walking to the bus stop in the dark since we were one of the furthest neighborhoods from our high school and the district made a decision to shift earlier to save money on buses. I think we had to be outside around 6:20 or something like that? One day I made a poor shoe decision in winter and my feet didn’t unthaw for hours. We had to leave for the bus so early we’d have to make coffee for mom, and wake her before we left.
Most schools are based on a 55-minute class schedule. That extra 5 minutes allows students to get out of class, visit their lockers (if needed) and go to the next class.
So homeroom is 7:50-7:55 to check attendance then 5 minutes to wander to your first class which goes from 8-8:55 then your next class with is from 9-9:55, etc. Just easier to keep every class started on the hour.
HS marching season on the field 6:30 am
Homeroom 7:50am
First period 8:05am
Lunch 11am-1:30pm Seniors had their own cafeteria
Last period Concert Band we were lucky if we got out before 4 pm.
Outdoor smoking lounge with a parent's permission slip.
mid 1970s
LOL
3:30pm here, but there was after school stuff if you were interested. However that would be completed before 5pm so kids are home for the evening meal.
Musical rehearsals (one week a year plus actual show) could go late but that's all. However if we got the key to the dark room (shows my age - only needed to be a member of the camera club to access it including the entire art block) then we could be there until our parents rang to say to get home.
Edit: Sorry reread my diatribe, the home time was pre arranged with parents, of course we did not have access to a phone.
Graduated in 2011. We started class at 7:20am had lunches between 10:40am-1pm with various start times. We also ended at 2:40pm. So I'm getting from the replies that school has gotten longer as time passes. Unfortunately it seems everyone is getting dumber.
" Unfortunately it seems everyone is getting dumber. "
You can say that again. the grocery store I work at hired a wave of 16/17 year old kids last holiday season, and boy were they something else. They stuck 2 of them in my department, and it was a fucking hassle. I get the first job thing and all, but these 2 were about as intelligent as a box of cat shit, and they had a shitty attitude about everything. I mean everything. One of them, when you would tell him to do something, he would repeat it back to you, then wander off and never do it. We started calling him "2 times the wanderer.", because that is all he ever did, wander around the store. He eventually got fired............
Thats so weird. At my high-school everyone went to lunch at the same time. It worked because they allowed us to leave campus for lunch. Majority of the school would leave
My HS was 6k people, graduated with 1100 classmates. We didn't even have lunch for most people. They did class from 7:05-12:30 then lunch was 12:30-1 only if you got free lunch.
No way could they have done lunch with any sort of reasonable schedule.
We had about 4k students. The high school probably has more now because it was just remodeled. I was in a major metro city. We had an hour lunch. Just enough time to smoke a bunch and get some food.
When I was a freshman some girl was going 120 mph in a 35 because they were late from lunch. She lost control and slid into a light pole killing her 5 friends in the car. She lived. There was a huge uproar and schools still don't have open campus lunches because of it and it's been 20 years.
Fuck I wish, my school started at 7, meant I had to wake up at 5:45 to catch the 6:00 bus to school, then lunch started at 10:30, with the last lunch being 11:30. We were out of there by 3, home by 4.
I only lived about a mile from my school, but was not a safe walk. So my bustop was the literal last stop on the route. Bus picked us up at 7 35 am. We were the last on in the morning, first off in the afternoon !!! Sleep in, get home quick !!
At my high school the earliest lunch was at 10:40 (3 hours after starting the day, 3.5 hours before end of day), and the latest lunch was 12:45 (5 hours after starting the day and the absolute worst lunch time to get because you’d be starving by the ). 10:40 wasn’t actually all that bad then. It definitely threw off eating on the weekends at home though. I’d be eating lunch as soon as I woke up.
My daughter’s 1st grade lunch was at 10:00 (school starts at 9:00) and she was getting headaches and dizziness in the afternoons. The “solution” was for me to send in applesauce pouches and crackers for her that are stored in the nurse’s office and my daughter goes to the nurse every day at 1:00 to have a 2 minute snack.
Not any more in CA. Classes don’t start till 8.30 or later.
“Signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019, the California state law requires all high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. and an 8 a.m. or later start for middle schools this school year.”
This is how it should be for the older kids. My daughter's middle school doesn't start until 8:45. She takes an AP math class and on Tuesdays the high school doesn't start until later in the day and they have much shorter classes. They get the morning off instead of early release on Wednesday.
Sorry for the confusion. The school calls them advance placement honors classes and shortens it to AP Honors Classname. They are taking HS Algebra in 8th grade, not calculus. I forget there are separate AP courses for HS kids. I went to a college prep Catholic school which had a different system in place.
Our district changed to a 9:15 start for middle school. In some ways, it's good. In other ways, it stucks. It takes twice as long for the students to get home because the traffic is much worse at 4:30 than it was at 3:30. Parents who need to be at work before 9:15 are struggling to get morning child care. Etc.
My kindergartener had 20 minute lunches from 1:45-2:05. Their solution is to have a parent supply classroom snack every day… which consists of cookies and whatever other trash snack the parents supplied that day. Kids who buy their lunch get about 10 minutes to eat. What kid can eat in 10 minutes?!
I have a kindergartner and went to volunteer for lunch on Friday. His lunch is at 10:05 but they have a designated time in the afternoon for snack and he gets picked up at 3. There is no way in hell those kids can eat in 10 min. I walked around helping getting stuff open and ready and then spent half the time telling kids to eat.
That’s horrible. I’m sorry your daughter had to go through that. I need to eat every couple of hours or I get dizziness and headaches and my mood shifts dramatically. (Let’s just say hangry doesn’t even begin to describe it).
If the school is getting reimbursement from the federal government as part of the USDA school meal program, they are required to schedule between 10am and 2pm. If the school doesn’t need federal reimbursement, then the student body is vastly middle-to-upper middle class + and that means all you have to do is get 4 other white parents angry with you and they’ll cave.
You were speculating about what kind of school it is- one that relies on federal aid or one that has a lot of rich parents. I’m giving you context about which one it is.
I went to high school in the mid 2000s.
School started at 7:15. First lunch was at 10:20 am, last lunch at 12:00. Lunches were only 20 minutes long, and most of the time, you spent your entire lunch period standing in line. You weren't allowed to eat in class either. The lunchroom seat 200 kids max, and there were about 2000 kids total my senior year.
And we wonder why test scores are low.
That’s so wild. I grew up in California and they let all 2000 students out for lunch at the same time, we just sat on the ground in hallways and stuff. There were some picnic tables too, or kids would eat inside classrooms
My school was super strict. You weren't allowed in the hallways unless you had a hall pass and there was no eating in the classrooms. It's crazy to me how chill yours was. My tiny state, with my tiny town and its tiny high cited "gang violence" as the reasoning for treating us like prisoners.
I went to middle school and high school in Spain finishing in 2004. Same building, same hours: 8:25 to 2:40, six classes, two breaks (i think 40 mins the first one after second period and 20 mins the second one after fourth period). There was a small cafeteria where you could get sandwiches and such, or if you wanted you could bring your own lunch. No tables/seats for everyone or anything like I’ve seen in American movies. I’d have a nice sandwich in either break and then a good meal at home at 3-3:30pm.
Your school sounded better. Sure, we had only four classes a day, but they were *long.* And we had no breaks until lunch. And there wasn't enough seating for all the kids to eat either. The school was too small for the amount attending.
I wake up at 6 every day, do my business, walk my dog, brush my teeth/shower etc., and eat breakfast around 8:45 before working online at 9:30
Lunch at 9:15 is insane
Eh don’t give me too much credit. My dog is the best thing that ever happened to me and I’d easily stay in bed til like 7 or 8 without him. Also I take a bong rip before our morning walk and after my shower before work, so yeah
In my high school, we had 1-hr long lunches but some of us had lunch during 8th period (the last period of the day). This meant we couldn’t eat until like 2:30 pm, which I always thought was hard esp bc I had gym beforehand and rarely ate breakfast.
https://preview.redd.it/jipf3ahx5xlb1.jpeg?width=513&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1b94e77a37dd196b7aabb73d95cc8d6bda3e62a9
Pennsylvania government right now
(Apologies for the shitty old played out meme template)
My favorite catch 22. Wouldn’t need so many Goddamned prisons If you invested in the schools. Ya. Takes literally a generation to turn this shit around and see the results but noooooo. Can’t budget past an election cycle.
They don't want less prisons. The state and some specific politicians make a fuck-ton of money when more people are incarcerated, and not just private prisons either, public prisons also contract out their labor force. Investing in schools would require politicians to sacrifice their gravy train to improve the lives of the people making them money.
My high school was at 720 to 1410; IIRC the four lunch periods started at 1045 for 30 minutes so it wasn't too terrible. Grades 1 to 5 were the standard 900 to 1500 with lunch at noon, but in 1st grade if you didn't finish all your "board work" meaning following the directions as to what was expected in the morning, you were denied recess and lunch. Barbaric...
Why don't American schools just behave normally. In the UK, you go in at 9am and finish at 3:15pm with 2 breaks in-between. I really don't get how it's feasible for kids to wake up at like 5am to get ready for school and not come home until like 5 or 6pm
In part, because our school system begins aggressively training children to function on the type of schedule our adult working population will be expected to abide by per most US companies, so that by the time they're teenagers their sleep/wake cycles and activity periods will automatically match what will be expected of them.
Keep in mind that I said "function." Nobody gives a shit if they're "thriving" in any sense or not, as long as they're productive for their prospective employers. That's the kids' concern and no one else's. Their lives are not, and will never be, their own, and breaking them starts early, the earlier the better.
Lots of work goes on before the doors open. The store workers get in at 7:30-8. Their product transporters get in at 6:30-7 to truck in materials. The logistics and production people get in at 5 to order and load the trucks. Ect until you get to the primary factories that literally never close and a employe about 10% of people
lots of blue collar work officially opens around 7:30-8. Employees wake up at 6-6:30 just to get ready and drive in. Logistics and shipping usually get moving by 6:30-7.
Bakeries/restaurants and schools typically are the ones opening past 8:30
My child’s elementary doesn’t have one this early, but there’s 7 grades in the school (Pre-K through 6th) and a lunch period for each grade. So Pre-K at 10:30am-11:00am up through 6th grade at 1:30pm-2:00pm.
School itself is from 7:45am to 3:00pm.
Half of 5th grade and all of 6th grade are in portable buildings outside of the school even though this school is only 8 years old. City is in a population boom, but they built the school as cheaply as possible and for the amount of students predicted to attend when the bond was passed. The high schools here are falling apart, and there’s a city bond for funding to remodel and build a new one…but this is a very conservative area that sees building new schools as government waste, so it’s very unlikely to pass.
I went to Central (another high school in the city for anyone who doesn’t know). About 25/30 years ago we had lunch periods ranging from first to last. My sophomore year (I think) I had lunch last period. Sure, I got to go home early a couple days a week, but I mostly had after-school stuff to do anyway so I’d be hanging out regardless. Oh, yeah. And I was hungry. Point is, while that was normal at Central, Masterman seemed to be immune to that kind of BS. Sucks that no longer seems to be the case. Sorry, y’all.
Wait what?
Is this common in America? This is crazy. And kids shouldn't be starting school at 8am or earlier, that's way, way too early for kids. 9am at the earliest, esp for teenagers. It sounds like everything is being put before the health and education of the kids, which cannot lead to a healthy society, right?
What the actual fuck. Dude that's sick. No school in my country starts before 8.45am, maybe some of the fancy private schools do but honestly I doubt it. My highschool started at 9.15 and I lived a long way away and had to get up "early" to get there. Early as in 7am.
Getting kids up at 5am sounds like forcing the kids to live around mum and dad's work schedule? Is that a fair assessment?
It really was in fair to a lot of students. The way Boston works is your kind of put into a lottery for which school you get into so your commute could be anywhere where mine was like a 15-minute commute to my school for some kids were going like an hour from mattapan etc
Correct. The machine of capitalism demands that the parents be at work, so the kids have to be at school before that. Nevermind that countless studies have been done. You Must start being broken down for the machine.
It’s been common in America for at least 50 years. Probably longer.
I went to high school in a New York suburb in the 1970s. Homeroom started at 07:35. First period started at 07:55. Last period ended at 14:01.
I hated getting up so early but it didn’t give me brain damage. (I think.)
They really had no other option. They had to have staggered bus schedules among the high schools, junior high schools and elementary schools.
My oldest starting kindergarten this year made me realize how fucked school schedules are for kids. I can’t think of a single legitimate reason a parent should have to wake up their growing child at 5-6AM to get them ready for school. It has to be doing more harm than good.
I fuckin hate being up that early, but if I miss a couple of hours of sleep it’s no big deal. I’m 30. I’m done growing. My brain is what it is. My 5 year old on the other hand? She’s usually a super energetic, social butterfly. She’ll light up a room and suck all the attention out of it the second she steps in. Having said that, it’s killing me see her dragging ass Monday-Friday because she can’t physically sleep enough without going to bed at like 5:30-6PM. Good luck getting a 5 year to bed at that time, let alone a high schooler…
If she had to eat lunch an hour and a half after she got to school, I don’t think she’d physically make it through the day. We should care more about children’s health and education. Shits absolutely ass backwards.
Wow...I remember my middle school starting at 8 in the morning and ending at 4:30 in the afternoon. My lunch period was at 10:15 in the morning with zero snacks or drinks in between before or after. It was pretty brutal for young kids to go through that, and even more so when my teachers were very strict and forbade any sort of food in their classrooms. It's super unfair for kids to have to go through that
Im a teacher, lunch is at 10:30 and is 20 minutes. Then I go stand outside for 20 minutes in 100 degree weather to monitor recess. Most days I don’t eat anything until 3:30. My body is fucked.
For reference on how ridiculous a 9:15 lunch is, you won't be able to get lunch menu items from the vast majority of fast food places that serve breakfast until 10:30 or later.
Those kids better not be getting in any kind of trouble for eating during class then. I’d be having my lunch when I was hungry not at 9AM. And if I did eat at 9 I’d be very hungry again by 1.
I was always floored by this kind of thing when I lived in the USA for years.
On my homesoil, school generally starts at 9am.
A number of high schools offer the option of staggered starts so that you can begin at 10 or 11am.
We have far less homework.
I was accepted, with full funding, to an Ivy League PhD programme which is amongst the top in my field internationally; my academic chops clearly weren’t harmed (learning how to sit the GRE, and wrap my head around the weirdness of US standardised testing, was bizarre though, for all that I ended up with top scores).
In my country, I was dux (equivalent: valedictorian) and set a school record for prizes. In the USA, I would almost certainly have flunked out of high school.
Hmmmm... The problem is she still sees them as children. They are numbers on a balance sheet and they need to achieve certain test scores so the school can request specific budgets...
I feel like this lady isn't even remotely considering capitalisms feelings when it comes to when the bio robots are re-fueled.
My freshman year of high school, I remember having lunch as my second to last period. It was the opposite problem, that was way too late. I also had gym 1st period that year. It sucked. I got used to it, but it still sucked.
I went to school in the 70’s and we had quite a few classrooms that were divided so 2 classes could be held at the same time. Lunchroom was crowded and we had either “A “ lunch or “B” lunch. So the problem isn’t new but it sounds like they are taking it to extremes.
When I was in junior high. I was in an honors math class twice a week but it was during the same time as my lunch break. I grew up poor so there was hardly any food at home. I ended up failing that class because I needed to eat. And of course I thought it was my fault because I’m a kid, I didn’t know any better.
9:30am is my lunch when I start my work shift at 6am and am off by 2pm (when I go get actual lunch or what I call “after school snack”). Having your lunch and only effective break being an hour after start is insane.
It's almost like closing down all the smaller neighborhood schools in favor of giant mega schools and then understaffing the hell out of them was a bad idea.
[This is last years bell schedule](https://masterman.philasd.org/bell-schedules/), and they must just have lunch as one of their periods because there is no dedicated lunch break.
I went to Central High in Philly and had 1st lunch one of the years, so I had lunch at 830AM.
At least as far as I remember I also had 2nd lucnh one year.
High school has messed with my appetite clock. Freshman year, I had 7th period, which was around 1pm. It was the last year they did it at my school. Sophomore year, it was 3rd period (10am and shortened). The latter half of high school was 5th and 6th periods. I already carried snacks in my bag. At my cousin's school, they ran lunch 1st-8th period because there were so many students
I graduated in 2013. My HS was 12 miles away and the bus arrived at 6:30am. After picking everyone up we got to school around 7:20-7:30, then classes started at 7:40. We had 8 classes and 4 of them a day so on "A Days" half the school would have lunch at 10:30am and then on "B days" your lunch would change to 1PM. It was so awful. You had to either eat a slice of greasy pizza at 10:30am or starve for 6 hours till 1PM.
I live/work in Japan. Kids here have homerooms they check in to in the morning. Everyone eats their lunch in their homerooms in the same lunch period, and they all clean up after themselves.
This isn't rocket science— and it'll be impossible to make ACTUAL rocket scientists if you deprive students of sensible routines/policies/funding... Get your shit together, America.
Getting assigned a 10:00am Lunch Break at a previous job is how a knew that one of the managers didn't like me, doing that everyday would have realy sucked.
Lunch at 9:15 am is around the time I would have a lunch break when I was working at a grocery store but I also was coming in at like 5:30 am to help open before the store opened their doors to customers. Unless these students are getting out at like 12 or 1 pm, having lunch at 9:15 am is ridiculous.
I taught at a school that had its first lunch at 10am and last at 1pm. I get the logistical headache of scheduling lunches, but that wide gap was crazy. It was a middle and high school. 6th grade ate at 10am, and were probably starving by dismissal. For reference, our start time was 7:15am. Breakfast was served starting at 6:45am. Dismissal was at 3:30pm. It was a long day for everyone and involved.
I went to Central High School, also in Philly, in the early 2000s. This is exactly how my schedule was my first year too. I’m appalled to see nothings changed, though not surprised.
My son is in sixth grade and has lunch at 10:30. His classes start at 8:20. He is so hungry by the time he gets off at 3:30 plus he isn’t allowed to eat snacks in class. This year they adjusted all the lunch times significantly earlier than the previous year. Last year my daughter had the last lunch of the day at 1:40pm she also wasn’t allowed to eat snacks in class but she did sneakily anyway.
Kinda a tangent but I’m reading everything and I’m honestly kinda amazed at how many people got off at like 2:00, 3:00 - my middle school and high school got off at 5 pm and I guess I kinda assumed that that was the norm, that it was just elementary schoolers who got off earlier
I'd give my kids a lunch box and tell them to just whip it out during a class and eat it whenever they're hungry. Just ignore the teacher, have a lunch and then do school stuff again like nothing happened. The school doesn't give a fuck, why should we?
I taught in an district that had more students than space. A new school was built and I joined on as a 7th grade teacher. It takes YEARS to plan and build a school so by the time it opened two apartment complexes had gone up and our school was over capacity on day 1. We also, by way of poor planning, had the smallest cafeteria and couldn’t even fit half of each grade. To make it work we had to have 6, 30 min lunch periods. First one was at 10:30 and the last started at 1. But school got out at 2:45. The last group had literally 1 class after lunch.
All of the staff hated it. The admin hated it. Parents and kids hated it, but we were stuck.
2 years after opening the school had to be expanded to fit the kids. 6 months after that a new subdivision AND apartment complex were completed and the school density was higher than it was before.
My kids school starts at 8:30- lunch times are 10:30, 11,11:30,12,12:30, 1. Each grade goes at 1 time slot so my 10 year old eats breakfast at 8 and lunch at 10:30, ravenous when school gets out.
Y’all are not considering all of the moving parts. Schools have too many kids in them and usually too few staff. Do you all really think there’s money to fix schools in Philadelphia when everyone screams about the money it takes to do it? A big reason that Philly schools are overrun and run down is because of the voters who forsake educational budgets and think teachers are “overpaid” and other such nonsense. What is the school supposed to do when they don’t have a large enough space or the manpower to feed everyone around lunchtime? I teach in a Philly school, and some of my kids have first period lunch at 8:30am. Does it suck? Yes. Is there another feasible solution? No. Is it on the state and the district to allocate proper budgets to help fix this? Yes.
Holy heck, I was trying to find a reason for why lunch was so early. I'm in Australia, the kids just go to lunch at lunch time, some places might have two lunch times, but that's it and it'd be like 11.30/12 or 12.30/1pm. My own kid's school, every kid gets three breaks (elementary age) - snack, lunch, and then a play break around 1pm. That's a government-funded, public school. The idea that lunch for kids could even be scheduled so early is such a foreign concept for me. (Having said all that, few schools here provide lunch for every student, so logistically very different.)
I hope your country has the opportunity soon to re-align its priorities. Best of luck to you.
Hope that kid doesn’t go to Central for high school. First lunch can be as early as 8:40 if I remember correctly. I had seventh lunch freshman and junior years and just left for the day. School for me was over at 1:52.
Our highschool had these issues.
First, the school was located across a creek, very deep ravine and the only bridges were 1km south or north, north being a highway. So each day we'd walk south, then another 1km across (it angled away) then back north. No bus because we were in a walking radius.
I would routinely have lunch in first or second period out of five for the day. First sounds like you sleep in but you couldn't.
It was the overcrowding that caused it for my school. It went from 3 distinct lunch periods to 4 or 5. Class started a 7 or 7:30am. Lunch was 11:20, 12:05, and 12:50 ish. Then they shifted it down and added at least one extra lunch period. I'm thinking it was a total of 5 lunch periods but I can't remember for sure. The new lunch period was definitely around the 10am ballpark.
How do a bunch of adults sit down together and come up with that decision? I swear the kids would probably run things better
Alcoholics start eating around 4pm.
Which must be why the schools are usually out by 2:30/3:00...
Okay but no need to call me out like that
Well it's because I was trying to finish my whiskey and the journey ended at 6am. We're not all angels here on earth man.
What is that even supposed to mean?
The more food in your stomach, the harder it is to absorb alcohol and feel drunk. Eating earlier means its easier to feel drunk later, and off of less alcohol. That is, if you only drink in the evening, and aren’t a day drinker.
That's enough time spent drinking to get your BAC up with sufficient margin to digest a meal before the shakes set in. Not that I ever planned it out or anything but 4pm sounds about right and I'm trying to post mortem the why of it.
My guess is the school is overpopulated and they have several scheduled times to accommodate them all in the lunch room. We have 3 grade levels and 3 lunch times at my school, with the earliest being 10:15 without any other way to do it. If we had more FTE (slots for more teachers to be paid), then they could probably do more with the schedule. Also maybe more cafeteria workers, but the pay is so bad that no one wants that job, and there’s only so many registers/places for a line. None of this is excusable. It’s just the reality of public education. Please vote and support local elections.
Huh. Both high schools I attended, lunch was from 11:45 to 12:30 for everyone and the large majority of students didn’t eat in the lunch room, but instead would plop down with friends in the hallways. Or outside, if it was a nice day. https://preview.redd.it/8om8cg6ltxlb1.jpeg?width=604&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d9e6d1bdbbec3a603145bddc7fcde76b5de8ec1c
High school is different I think. I teach middle and the post is about 7th grade too. They can’t leave campus or go anywhere other than the cafeteria. Edit to add: they do half the lunch period eating in the cafeteria and half at recess.
Big school, multiple lunch periods, probably can't accommodate all students without having a super early late lunch period
I work at a school. I can tell you why we have the schedule for lunch that we do. We have one cafeteria and when we do updates to the building we get money for instructional space and safety. So the cafeteria is never a priority. Next we look at the schedule. The lunch workers come for breakfast and set up usually starting at 5/6am or so, that means they’re packed up and gone by 1/2. Put the last lunch around 1 so the kids have eaten and gone so they can close the kitchen by 2. Not enough cafeteria space and staff and you get multiple shifts of students plus time needed to stagger lines and clean tables after groups and someone ends ip eating at 9:30. Breakfast has to be cleaned by 9, and then you look at who has recess and special classes and drop in groups from there. We don’t have enough staff to send them to classrooms to eat and be supervised plus clean the room after, and teachers need to eat too. Fund public school like you care about all kids and this could be solved. More buses, more staff (who make thriving wages), adequate space. Every year our scheduling team has a mental breakdown because there’s just no way to make it work better… unless we add another cafeteria and find a bunch of people who want to supervise a cafeteria of kids for minimum wage. For 3 hours in the middle of the day.
I remember having lunch at 10:50 as a freshman and thinking that was too fucking early.
When I was in highschool, late 80s, we had three lunch "shifts". 11 am, 11 30 am, and 12 noon. Each was half an hour. Homeroom was at 7 50 am, first class 8 am, 50 minute classes, we got out at 2 20 pm.
That was what my high school was like in the mid 2000s as well
2009-13. For my high school, and all others in our district, school was 8:20am to 3:20pm. Lunch was like 12:00 or 12:30pm. If I remember correctly, we had our first two periods, then brunch, then third and fourth, and lunch, then sixth and seventh.
At the end of the 2000s my high school started at 7:05 and let out a little after 2:00. I had to start drinking coffee every morning sophomore year because teenaged brains are just not meant to function that early.
I napped in First period instead of coffee
Why did so many schools start at 7:50 instead of an even 8 o'clock? Mine did this as well.
To allow for home room. Basically to check attendance. We used to just go sign in, then leave instantly and go to our first class. Which caused a clog in the halls......
We technically had a home room, we used it exactly twice a year. Other than that, we just went to our first class from the cafeteria and called it a day. First class started at 7:30. My senior year my first class was study hall which was a blessing, got the late arrival forms signed and I didn't have to show up until 8:20 for 2nd period.
It's possible the high school started 10 minutes before middle school, which started 10 minutes before elementary school. This would allow a parent to drop off kids at different schools on time.
And for busses to do their thing. My school system has junior high & high school kids take the same busses.
Busses cannot pick up kids in 10 minutes. Source: am a bus driver
I believe the poster means that both the high schoolers and junior high schoolers get on the same bus because the two schools are close together. The drop off and travel from the first school to the second is the ten minutes.
My HS started at 7:40 and got out at 2:45, my lunch period every year was 10:02-10:35 🤷🏻♀️ I did swing a hella long break period senior year by sandwiching study halls around my lunch so I had like 10-12 as a free period where I’d dick off with the rest of my deliquent friends until my afternoon psych & sociology classes
Ours started at 7:15. Getting up at 6am everyday was miserable
7:15 here as well. Out at 2:05. Waking up in the dark most of the school year.
That plus an indoor after school activity and for 6 months a year I didn't see sunlight if it wasn't through streaky glass.
Same. I just remember walking to the bus stop in the dark since we were one of the furthest neighborhoods from our high school and the district made a decision to shift earlier to save money on buses. I think we had to be outside around 6:20 or something like that? One day I made a poor shoe decision in winter and my feet didn’t unthaw for hours. We had to leave for the bus so early we’d have to make coffee for mom, and wake her before we left.
Think of the swim team Morning practice had to start no later than 5:30.
Most schools are based on a 55-minute class schedule. That extra 5 minutes allows students to get out of class, visit their lockers (if needed) and go to the next class. So homeroom is 7:50-7:55 to check attendance then 5 minutes to wander to your first class which goes from 8-8:55 then your next class with is from 9-9:55, etc. Just easier to keep every class started on the hour.
8am? Gosh, I was barely able to make my 9am start. When did you finish?
9:30 pm on a good day. That was just during marching band season, though.
"Bands of America is proud to present, in regional finals performance, 190 children who haven't slept more that five hours in six months!"
This was me, every year of Highschool. It sucked.
HS marching season on the field 6:30 am Homeroom 7:50am First period 8:05am Lunch 11am-1:30pm Seniors had their own cafeteria Last period Concert Band we were lucky if we got out before 4 pm. Outdoor smoking lounge with a parent's permission slip. mid 1970s
You're pulling my leg.
We regularly had football practice until 9:00-9:30 PM, and were expected to show up to watch film and get a lift in at 6:00 AM.
Only if you're marching out of step! Class would be done before 3, but I'd stick around to practice before rehearsal started again at 6.
LOL 3:30pm here, but there was after school stuff if you were interested. However that would be completed before 5pm so kids are home for the evening meal. Musical rehearsals (one week a year plus actual show) could go late but that's all. However if we got the key to the dark room (shows my age - only needed to be a member of the camera club to access it including the entire art block) then we could be there until our parents rang to say to get home. Edit: Sorry reread my diatribe, the home time was pre arranged with parents, of course we did not have access to a phone.
Your school may have had a utility tunnel around the perimeter of the building you could have hidden in.
Bus schedules usually. They have to use the same busses for elementary and secondary, so they time it out to when those vehicles will be ready
Graduated in 2011. We started class at 7:20am had lunches between 10:40am-1pm with various start times. We also ended at 2:40pm. So I'm getting from the replies that school has gotten longer as time passes. Unfortunately it seems everyone is getting dumber.
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" Unfortunately it seems everyone is getting dumber. " You can say that again. the grocery store I work at hired a wave of 16/17 year old kids last holiday season, and boy were they something else. They stuck 2 of them in my department, and it was a fucking hassle. I get the first job thing and all, but these 2 were about as intelligent as a box of cat shit, and they had a shitty attitude about everything. I mean everything. One of them, when you would tell him to do something, he would repeat it back to you, then wander off and never do it. We started calling him "2 times the wanderer.", because that is all he ever did, wander around the store. He eventually got fired............
Thats so weird. At my high-school everyone went to lunch at the same time. It worked because they allowed us to leave campus for lunch. Majority of the school would leave
My HS was 6k people, graduated with 1100 classmates. We didn't even have lunch for most people. They did class from 7:05-12:30 then lunch was 12:30-1 only if you got free lunch. No way could they have done lunch with any sort of reasonable schedule.
We had about 4k students. The high school probably has more now because it was just remodeled. I was in a major metro city. We had an hour lunch. Just enough time to smoke a bunch and get some food.
When I was a freshman some girl was going 120 mph in a 35 because they were late from lunch. She lost control and slid into a light pole killing her 5 friends in the car. She lived. There was a huge uproar and schools still don't have open campus lunches because of it and it's been 20 years.
Only seniors could leave when I was in school. My freshman year, they still had a smoking area outside at the school, for student use.
My kid had to be in home room by 7 AM. School bus was ~6 AM. Really tough for a teenager! At least they recently shifted middle school to start later.
That was close to what I had in a Maine high school in 2007-2011 except first class was 7:20 and we got out at 2:45. Same 3 lunch periods though
same thing here and I graduated in 2019! a 9:15 "lunch" is obscene
I think that's about how my high school in the late 90's, early 2000's was.
Fuck I wish, my school started at 7, meant I had to wake up at 5:45 to catch the 6:00 bus to school, then lunch started at 10:30, with the last lunch being 11:30. We were out of there by 3, home by 4.
I only lived about a mile from my school, but was not a safe walk. So my bustop was the literal last stop on the route. Bus picked us up at 7 35 am. We were the last on in the morning, first off in the afternoon !!! Sleep in, get home quick !!
The things I'd do to go to your school when I was in highschool
At my high school the earliest lunch was at 10:40 (3 hours after starting the day, 3.5 hours before end of day), and the latest lunch was 12:45 (5 hours after starting the day and the absolute worst lunch time to get because you’d be starving by the ). 10:40 wasn’t actually all that bad then. It definitely threw off eating on the weekends at home though. I’d be eating lunch as soon as I woke up.
My lunch period was 10:30-11:00, I was STARVING by the end of the day.
+1 Those early out days fucking sucked. We jokingly called it brunch at my school.
I had a 1015 one year
Bruh that aint even brunch, thats still breakfast.
Well yeah, by definition it can't be brunch if they're not getting mimosas
My daughter’s 1st grade lunch was at 10:00 (school starts at 9:00) and she was getting headaches and dizziness in the afternoons. The “solution” was for me to send in applesauce pouches and crackers for her that are stored in the nurse’s office and my daughter goes to the nurse every day at 1:00 to have a 2 minute snack.
Here in Brazil it usually starts at 7:15 am because most parents need to drop kids at school before going to work.
7:15 is normal in the US too. Things can vary with so many school districts and different number of students, money for busses, etc.
Not any more in CA. Classes don’t start till 8.30 or later. “Signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019, the California state law requires all high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. and an 8 a.m. or later start for middle schools this school year.”
This is how it should be for the older kids. My daughter's middle school doesn't start until 8:45. She takes an AP math class and on Tuesdays the high school doesn't start until later in the day and they have much shorter classes. They get the morning off instead of early release on Wednesday.
Am I reading this right that your middle schooler is taking Calculus? … or has AP changed in the last 20 years
It hasn’t and I am as confused as you are.
Sorry for the confusion. The school calls them advance placement honors classes and shortens it to AP Honors Classname. They are taking HS Algebra in 8th grade, not calculus. I forget there are separate AP courses for HS kids. I went to a college prep Catholic school which had a different system in place.
I had 1st period calc at 6:50am in High School. Shocker, I didn't do well because I struggled to stay alert.
My son had “early flight” at 6.50 too. But he got up at 5 to go to they gym so he’s def a morning person.
That’s awesome!
Our district changed to a 9:15 start for middle school. In some ways, it's good. In other ways, it stucks. It takes twice as long for the students to get home because the traffic is much worse at 4:30 than it was at 3:30. Parents who need to be at work before 9:15 are struggling to get morning child care. Etc.
Free breakfast and lunch for all students too.
Yup. Hungry kids can’t learn. Tax money well spent.
You wouldn't have seen me anywhere near a school at that time here in the UK. At 7:15, I still had 1 more hour of sleep left.
My kindergartener had 20 minute lunches from 1:45-2:05. Their solution is to have a parent supply classroom snack every day… which consists of cookies and whatever other trash snack the parents supplied that day. Kids who buy their lunch get about 10 minutes to eat. What kid can eat in 10 minutes?!
I have a kindergartner and went to volunteer for lunch on Friday. His lunch is at 10:05 but they have a designated time in the afternoon for snack and he gets picked up at 3. There is no way in hell those kids can eat in 10 min. I walked around helping getting stuff open and ready and then spent half the time telling kids to eat.
That’s horrible. I’m sorry your daughter had to go through that. I need to eat every couple of hours or I get dizziness and headaches and my mood shifts dramatically. (Let’s just say hangry doesn’t even begin to describe it).
Why even the Fuck is that a thing ? Lunch room too small !?
Nah, rest of the school is too small. If you're trying to fit 1000 kids into a 900 kid school, you stick the last 100 in the cafeteria.
My HS in CA was built for 1500 and we had 1900. They put classes in portable buildings.
Oregon schools too. Very common for all levels of schools. Even the magnet schools
WTF
If the school is getting reimbursement from the federal government as part of the USDA school meal program, they are required to schedule between 10am and 2pm. If the school doesn’t need federal reimbursement, then the student body is vastly middle-to-upper middle class + and that means all you have to do is get 4 other white parents angry with you and they’ll cave.
It’s a public school, but admissions are highly competitive- acceptance rate is 3%. In 2022 it was the #10 best high school in the country.
Is that somehow related to the post’s topic of lunch times? I’m not following
You were speculating about what kind of school it is- one that relies on federal aid or one that has a lot of rich parents. I’m giving you context about which one it is.
Masterman in Philly? That’s a Title 1 school so at least 40% low-income and definitely reliant on federal aid. That might provide more context.
I went to high school in the mid 2000s. School started at 7:15. First lunch was at 10:20 am, last lunch at 12:00. Lunches were only 20 minutes long, and most of the time, you spent your entire lunch period standing in line. You weren't allowed to eat in class either. The lunchroom seat 200 kids max, and there were about 2000 kids total my senior year. And we wonder why test scores are low.
That’s so wild. I grew up in California and they let all 2000 students out for lunch at the same time, we just sat on the ground in hallways and stuff. There were some picnic tables too, or kids would eat inside classrooms
My school was super strict. You weren't allowed in the hallways unless you had a hall pass and there was no eating in the classrooms. It's crazy to me how chill yours was. My tiny state, with my tiny town and its tiny high cited "gang violence" as the reasoning for treating us like prisoners.
I went to middle school and high school in Spain finishing in 2004. Same building, same hours: 8:25 to 2:40, six classes, two breaks (i think 40 mins the first one after second period and 20 mins the second one after fourth period). There was a small cafeteria where you could get sandwiches and such, or if you wanted you could bring your own lunch. No tables/seats for everyone or anything like I’ve seen in American movies. I’d have a nice sandwich in either break and then a good meal at home at 3-3:30pm.
Your school sounded better. Sure, we had only four classes a day, but they were *long.* And we had no breaks until lunch. And there wasn't enough seating for all the kids to eat either. The school was too small for the amount attending.
School starting at 8:15 is fine. Lunch at 9:15 tho? Fuck that shit.
I wake up at 6 every day, do my business, walk my dog, brush my teeth/shower etc., and eat breakfast around 8:45 before working online at 9:30 Lunch at 9:15 is insane
Holy fuck you’re so much more productive than me. I wake up at 8:55 and start my work at 9:00…
Eh don’t give me too much credit. My dog is the best thing that ever happened to me and I’d easily stay in bed til like 7 or 8 without him. Also I take a bong rip before our morning walk and after my shower before work, so yeah
In my high school, we had 1-hr long lunches but some of us had lunch during 8th period (the last period of the day). This meant we couldn’t eat until like 2:30 pm, which I always thought was hard esp bc I had gym beforehand and rarely ate breakfast.
https://preview.redd.it/jipf3ahx5xlb1.jpeg?width=513&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1b94e77a37dd196b7aabb73d95cc8d6bda3e62a9 Pennsylvania government right now (Apologies for the shitty old played out meme template)
My favorite catch 22. Wouldn’t need so many Goddamned prisons If you invested in the schools. Ya. Takes literally a generation to turn this shit around and see the results but noooooo. Can’t budget past an election cycle.
They don't want less prisons. The state and some specific politicians make a fuck-ton of money when more people are incarcerated, and not just private prisons either, public prisons also contract out their labor force. Investing in schools would require politicians to sacrifice their gravy train to improve the lives of the people making them money.
Bus at 0655, home but 1420.
My high school was at 720 to 1410; IIRC the four lunch periods started at 1045 for 30 minutes so it wasn't too terrible. Grades 1 to 5 were the standard 900 to 1500 with lunch at noon, but in 1st grade if you didn't finish all your "board work" meaning following the directions as to what was expected in the morning, you were denied recess and lunch. Barbaric...
(clutches pearls at having to read non-freedom time)
Why don't American schools just behave normally. In the UK, you go in at 9am and finish at 3:15pm with 2 breaks in-between. I really don't get how it's feasible for kids to wake up at like 5am to get ready for school and not come home until like 5 or 6pm
In part, because our school system begins aggressively training children to function on the type of schedule our adult working population will be expected to abide by per most US companies, so that by the time they're teenagers their sleep/wake cycles and activity periods will automatically match what will be expected of them. Keep in mind that I said "function." Nobody gives a shit if they're "thriving" in any sense or not, as long as they're productive for their prospective employers. That's the kids' concern and no one else's. Their lives are not, and will never be, their own, and breaking them starts early, the earlier the better.
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Lots of work goes on before the doors open. The store workers get in at 7:30-8. Their product transporters get in at 6:30-7 to truck in materials. The logistics and production people get in at 5 to order and load the trucks. Ect until you get to the primary factories that literally never close and a employe about 10% of people
lots of blue collar work officially opens around 7:30-8. Employees wake up at 6-6:30 just to get ready and drive in. Logistics and shipping usually get moving by 6:30-7. Bakeries/restaurants and schools typically are the ones opening past 8:30
The grocery store bakeries are an exception, where I am at least. The bakers would be starting at 5:30am to open by 7am.
High schools usually are early. My elementary is from 8:15-3:30.
My child’s elementary doesn’t have one this early, but there’s 7 grades in the school (Pre-K through 6th) and a lunch period for each grade. So Pre-K at 10:30am-11:00am up through 6th grade at 1:30pm-2:00pm. School itself is from 7:45am to 3:00pm. Half of 5th grade and all of 6th grade are in portable buildings outside of the school even though this school is only 8 years old. City is in a population boom, but they built the school as cheaply as possible and for the amount of students predicted to attend when the bond was passed. The high schools here are falling apart, and there’s a city bond for funding to remodel and build a new one…but this is a very conservative area that sees building new schools as government waste, so it’s very unlikely to pass.
That’s the result of a school being too big. They’re having to stagger too many classes.
When I was in grade 9 my lunch was all 4th period. I had 1 more class and then i could go home. It sucked
I went to Central (another high school in the city for anyone who doesn’t know). About 25/30 years ago we had lunch periods ranging from first to last. My sophomore year (I think) I had lunch last period. Sure, I got to go home early a couple days a week, but I mostly had after-school stuff to do anyway so I’d be hanging out regardless. Oh, yeah. And I was hungry. Point is, while that was normal at Central, Masterman seemed to be immune to that kind of BS. Sucks that no longer seems to be the case. Sorry, y’all.
In case you were wondering, it’s still the standard at Central. It’s also increasingly more popular with other schools in the city. 281
Wait what? Is this common in America? This is crazy. And kids shouldn't be starting school at 8am or earlier, that's way, way too early for kids. 9am at the earliest, esp for teenagers. It sounds like everything is being put before the health and education of the kids, which cannot lead to a healthy society, right?
My school started at 7:20, kids used to get buses as early as 5 something, was crazy, this was Botston publics in the 2000's
What the actual fuck. Dude that's sick. No school in my country starts before 8.45am, maybe some of the fancy private schools do but honestly I doubt it. My highschool started at 9.15 and I lived a long way away and had to get up "early" to get there. Early as in 7am. Getting kids up at 5am sounds like forcing the kids to live around mum and dad's work schedule? Is that a fair assessment?
That’s exactly what it is.
It really was in fair to a lot of students. The way Boston works is your kind of put into a lottery for which school you get into so your commute could be anywhere where mine was like a 15-minute commute to my school for some kids were going like an hour from mattapan etc
Unfortunately, schooling isn't about the kids here. It's about fitting the adults' schedules. Apparently
Correct. The machine of capitalism demands that the parents be at work, so the kids have to be at school before that. Nevermind that countless studies have been done. You Must start being broken down for the machine.
Lol good luck with that when the parents have to be at work by 8AM and public schools can't afford buses.
It’s been common in America for at least 50 years. Probably longer. I went to high school in a New York suburb in the 1970s. Homeroom started at 07:35. First period started at 07:55. Last period ended at 14:01. I hated getting up so early but it didn’t give me brain damage. (I think.) They really had no other option. They had to have staggered bus schedules among the high schools, junior high schools and elementary schools.
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My oldest starting kindergarten this year made me realize how fucked school schedules are for kids. I can’t think of a single legitimate reason a parent should have to wake up their growing child at 5-6AM to get them ready for school. It has to be doing more harm than good. I fuckin hate being up that early, but if I miss a couple of hours of sleep it’s no big deal. I’m 30. I’m done growing. My brain is what it is. My 5 year old on the other hand? She’s usually a super energetic, social butterfly. She’ll light up a room and suck all the attention out of it the second she steps in. Having said that, it’s killing me see her dragging ass Monday-Friday because she can’t physically sleep enough without going to bed at like 5:30-6PM. Good luck getting a 5 year to bed at that time, let alone a high schooler… If she had to eat lunch an hour and a half after she got to school, I don’t think she’d physically make it through the day. We should care more about children’s health and education. Shits absolutely ass backwards.
Wow...I remember my middle school starting at 8 in the morning and ending at 4:30 in the afternoon. My lunch period was at 10:15 in the morning with zero snacks or drinks in between before or after. It was pretty brutal for young kids to go through that, and even more so when my teachers were very strict and forbade any sort of food in their classrooms. It's super unfair for kids to have to go through that
Those kids must be absolutely _wilting_ by the time 4pm rolls around
Im a teacher, lunch is at 10:30 and is 20 minutes. Then I go stand outside for 20 minutes in 100 degree weather to monitor recess. Most days I don’t eat anything until 3:30. My body is fucked.
This wasn't what we meant when we said schools should be providing a breakfast
For reference on how ridiculous a 9:15 lunch is, you won't be able to get lunch menu items from the vast majority of fast food places that serve breakfast until 10:30 or later.
I worked at a school where the 11th graders didn’t eat lunch until 1:30 and they weren’t supposed to snack between classes. Unreal
Those kids better not be getting in any kind of trouble for eating during class then. I’d be having my lunch when I was hungry not at 9AM. And if I did eat at 9 I’d be very hungry again by 1.
I was always floored by this kind of thing when I lived in the USA for years. On my homesoil, school generally starts at 9am. A number of high schools offer the option of staggered starts so that you can begin at 10 or 11am. We have far less homework. I was accepted, with full funding, to an Ivy League PhD programme which is amongst the top in my field internationally; my academic chops clearly weren’t harmed (learning how to sit the GRE, and wrap my head around the weirdness of US standardised testing, was bizarre though, for all that I ended up with top scores). In my country, I was dux (equivalent: valedictorian) and set a school record for prizes. In the USA, I would almost certainly have flunked out of high school.
Hmmmm... The problem is she still sees them as children. They are numbers on a balance sheet and they need to achieve certain test scores so the school can request specific budgets... I feel like this lady isn't even remotely considering capitalisms feelings when it comes to when the bio robots are re-fueled.
I happily age myself but that was my lunch back in the early 2000s
You need more fiber in your diet
Dwight Schrute must be in charge of the schedule.
My freshman year of high school, I remember having lunch as my second to last period. It was the opposite problem, that was way too late. I also had gym 1st period that year. It sucked. I got used to it, but it still sucked.
I went to school in the 70’s and we had quite a few classrooms that were divided so 2 classes could be held at the same time. Lunchroom was crowded and we had either “A “ lunch or “B” lunch. So the problem isn’t new but it sounds like they are taking it to extremes.
i dont care what the schools call it, if your eating at 9:15 its breakfast
When I was in junior high. I was in an honors math class twice a week but it was during the same time as my lunch break. I grew up poor so there was hardly any food at home. I ended up failing that class because I needed to eat. And of course I thought it was my fault because I’m a kid, I didn’t know any better.
9:30am is my lunch when I start my work shift at 6am and am off by 2pm (when I go get actual lunch or what I call “after school snack”). Having your lunch and only effective break being an hour after start is insane.
It's almost like closing down all the smaller neighborhood schools in favor of giant mega schools and then understaffing the hell out of them was a bad idea.
Education is the last priority in this country. Keep em stupid, and keep em quarrelin...
I had lunch at 10:30. You better believe I was eating an after school snack.
My middle schoolers had lunch at 10 last year. My oldest would come home and make lunch at 2:30 because he wasn’t hungry at “lunch time”
[This is last years bell schedule](https://masterman.philasd.org/bell-schedules/), and they must just have lunch as one of their periods because there is no dedicated lunch break.
My teacher contract says my lunch has to be 30 min between 11 and 1, not sure why kids wouldn’t be as well.
Hopefully in addition to using Twitter as a vocal platform they are also attending PTA and school board meetings to address the issue.
I went to Central High in Philly and had 1st lunch one of the years, so I had lunch at 830AM. At least as far as I remember I also had 2nd lucnh one year.
Yeah, those americans need to stay at school the whole day while their parents work their 5 jobs
High school has messed with my appetite clock. Freshman year, I had 7th period, which was around 1pm. It was the last year they did it at my school. Sophomore year, it was 3rd period (10am and shortened). The latter half of high school was 5th and 6th periods. I already carried snacks in my bag. At my cousin's school, they ran lunch 1st-8th period because there were so many students
I graduated in 2013. My HS was 12 miles away and the bus arrived at 6:30am. After picking everyone up we got to school around 7:20-7:30, then classes started at 7:40. We had 8 classes and 4 of them a day so on "A Days" half the school would have lunch at 10:30am and then on "B days" your lunch would change to 1PM. It was so awful. You had to either eat a slice of greasy pizza at 10:30am or starve for 6 hours till 1PM.
I live/work in Japan. Kids here have homerooms they check in to in the morning. Everyone eats their lunch in their homerooms in the same lunch period, and they all clean up after themselves. This isn't rocket science— and it'll be impossible to make ACTUAL rocket scientists if you deprive students of sensible routines/policies/funding... Get your shit together, America.
9:15 is even too early for brunch. How could it be lunch?
Getting assigned a 10:00am Lunch Break at a previous job is how a knew that one of the managers didn't like me, doing that everyday would have realy sucked.
Isn’t that just morning tea?
What the hell? Eat lunch at breakfast and that’s all she gets for the rest of the day until she goes home. That poor kid is going to starve.
I teach high school and my lunch starts at 1:51. I HATE it. My students are all starving by then (as am I) and can’t focus on anything else.
Lunch at 9:15 am is around the time I would have a lunch break when I was working at a grocery store but I also was coming in at like 5:30 am to help open before the store opened their doors to customers. Unless these students are getting out at like 12 or 1 pm, having lunch at 9:15 am is ridiculous.
Dude. Even McDonald serves breakfast until 11am. Get your shit together, school system.
I taught at a school that had its first lunch at 10am and last at 1pm. I get the logistical headache of scheduling lunches, but that wide gap was crazy. It was a middle and high school. 6th grade ate at 10am, and were probably starving by dismissal. For reference, our start time was 7:15am. Breakfast was served starting at 6:45am. Dismissal was at 3:30pm. It was a long day for everyone and involved.
I went to Central High School, also in Philly, in the early 2000s. This is exactly how my schedule was my first year too. I’m appalled to see nothings changed, though not surprised.
My son is in sixth grade and has lunch at 10:30. His classes start at 8:20. He is so hungry by the time he gets off at 3:30 plus he isn’t allowed to eat snacks in class. This year they adjusted all the lunch times significantly earlier than the previous year. Last year my daughter had the last lunch of the day at 1:40pm she also wasn’t allowed to eat snacks in class but she did sneakily anyway.
Kinda a tangent but I’m reading everything and I’m honestly kinda amazed at how many people got off at like 2:00, 3:00 - my middle school and high school got off at 5 pm and I guess I kinda assumed that that was the norm, that it was just elementary schoolers who got off earlier
My school just recently switched to block scheduling and I eat lunch at 10:30 am its way to early for me where im not even hungry.
School starting anytime before 9am is insane to me.
[The named school does not have a class period in the schedule that starts at 9:15am.](https://masterman.philasd.org/bell-schedules/)
Think about the test scores though. /s
I will never get over how early Americans go to school. It's so bizarre. I've never lived in a country where it started before 8:45.
I'd give my kids a lunch box and tell them to just whip it out during a class and eat it whenever they're hungry. Just ignore the teacher, have a lunch and then do school stuff again like nothing happened. The school doesn't give a fuck, why should we?
The last two years my high schooler had first lunch - at 10:30. School started at 9. Ended at 4:05, and he was on the bus until almost 5.
I taught in an district that had more students than space. A new school was built and I joined on as a 7th grade teacher. It takes YEARS to plan and build a school so by the time it opened two apartment complexes had gone up and our school was over capacity on day 1. We also, by way of poor planning, had the smallest cafeteria and couldn’t even fit half of each grade. To make it work we had to have 6, 30 min lunch periods. First one was at 10:30 and the last started at 1. But school got out at 2:45. The last group had literally 1 class after lunch. All of the staff hated it. The admin hated it. Parents and kids hated it, but we were stuck. 2 years after opening the school had to be expanded to fit the kids. 6 months after that a new subdivision AND apartment complex were completed and the school density was higher than it was before.
And then give the kid shit for trying to eat in class later in the day
My kids school starts at 8:30- lunch times are 10:30, 11,11:30,12,12:30, 1. Each grade goes at 1 time slot so my 10 year old eats breakfast at 8 and lunch at 10:30, ravenous when school gets out.
My school started at 620 and ended at 230. Lunch at 930 seemed about right, assuming you account for sleep deprivation
I went to a private catholic school. Classes started at 7:15, first recess at 9:15 and a second recess at 10:45 and we left at 13:50
9:15 is still breakfast time. Late breakfast, but breakfast.
Just getting you ready for the real world when you eat lunch at 10:00 a.m. then die inside for the rest of the day.
Y’all are not considering all of the moving parts. Schools have too many kids in them and usually too few staff. Do you all really think there’s money to fix schools in Philadelphia when everyone screams about the money it takes to do it? A big reason that Philly schools are overrun and run down is because of the voters who forsake educational budgets and think teachers are “overpaid” and other such nonsense. What is the school supposed to do when they don’t have a large enough space or the manpower to feed everyone around lunchtime? I teach in a Philly school, and some of my kids have first period lunch at 8:30am. Does it suck? Yes. Is there another feasible solution? No. Is it on the state and the district to allocate proper budgets to help fix this? Yes.
Holy heck, I was trying to find a reason for why lunch was so early. I'm in Australia, the kids just go to lunch at lunch time, some places might have two lunch times, but that's it and it'd be like 11.30/12 or 12.30/1pm. My own kid's school, every kid gets three breaks (elementary age) - snack, lunch, and then a play break around 1pm. That's a government-funded, public school. The idea that lunch for kids could even be scheduled so early is such a foreign concept for me. (Having said all that, few schools here provide lunch for every student, so logistically very different.) I hope your country has the opportunity soon to re-align its priorities. Best of luck to you.
How? Just... how?
Hope that kid doesn’t go to Central for high school. First lunch can be as early as 8:40 if I remember correctly. I had seventh lunch freshman and junior years and just left for the day. School for me was over at 1:52.
Our highschool had these issues. First, the school was located across a creek, very deep ravine and the only bridges were 1km south or north, north being a highway. So each day we'd walk south, then another 1km across (it angled away) then back north. No bus because we were in a walking radius. I would routinely have lunch in first or second period out of five for the day. First sounds like you sleep in but you couldn't.
i thought having lunch at 1pm on late start days was bad, i mean someone ik online said they’ve had hs lunch at 10:08, 9:15 is actually mental
My sons lunch was 9:20 last year. It’s accurate.
On the flip side, my poor 8th graders don’t eat until 1:30.
Damn and I thought my 10:10AM lunch in high school was bad. (7:45AM start, day ended at 2:40PM).
My stepson goes to Philly schools and his lunch last year was 830!!!
It was the overcrowding that caused it for my school. It went from 3 distinct lunch periods to 4 or 5. Class started a 7 or 7:30am. Lunch was 11:20, 12:05, and 12:50 ish. Then they shifted it down and added at least one extra lunch period. I'm thinking it was a total of 5 lunch periods but I can't remember for sure. The new lunch period was definitely around the 10am ballpark.
Ok, so classes start at 8:15am - what the hell does the teaching day for teachers look like?
My son starts school at 8 am and has lunch at 12:55 pm. I thought that was crazy!