Hungry (And Illegal) Mondays

To the Editor:

My son is a student at Newtown High School. This year his “lunch” was at 7:25 am on Mondays. I thought how absurd this was.

My wife contacted the Board of Education chairperson who referred her to the interim principal, J. Smith. Options he suggested were to eat in the classroom (which is against an unwritten school policy) or eat a “power bar” in the hall in between classes. At this time there are no immediate plans in place to make any changes to the Monday schedule.

My wife contacted the Connecticut State Department of Education and was told there is a state statute, 10-221o, which states “Lunch periods. Recess. Each local and regional board of education shall require each school under its jurisdiction to (1) offer all full day students a daily lunch period of not less than twenty minutes.”

My wife asked for more clarification. “CSDE’s legal department indicates that a ‘lunch period’ is the time frame between 10 am and 2 pm, based on the federal US Department of Agriculture regulations for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) which require that lunch is served between 10 am and 2 pm.”

My wife was told this only affected a handful of students, but I happened to be reading the October issue of high school’s newspaper, The Hawkeye, which has an article called “Hungry Mondays” apparently written by a hungry NHS student. The article talks about how students dread Monday due to the horrible lunch times.

I’m not sure parents and students know the school system is breaking the law. The problem is there appears to be no agency to enforce this law. If our students broke the law once a week at school, they’d want to arrest, suspend or expel them.

Sincerely,

Peter Wlasuk

1982 NHS graduate

Hunting Ridge Road, Newtown                                 October 15, 2007