‘Hungry Mondays’ To Continue at NHS

By Martha Coville

Longstanding questions about the exact number of Newtown High School students denied a lunch period on “Hungry Mondays” were recently addressed by NHS Interim Principal Jay Smith at a Board of Education Meeting.  Parents have called the Monday lunch schedule unreasonable since the first week of school, and Superintendent Jokubaitis confirmed at the November 8 Board of Education that the schedule violates state and federal laws. 

At the November 20 school board meeting, in response to a question from board member Paul Mangiafico, Mr Smith said that 280 students remain without a lunch period on Mondays. In contrast, Mr Smith stressed that only “a few” students were without Monday lunch periods at a November 4 Board of Education meeting.

Mr Smith insisted throughout the fall that the Monday lunch schedule affected only a few NHS students. But he also said that he was “not surprised” to discover that several hundred students actually went without lunch periods on Mondays.

Although NHS students, their parents, and the state Board of Education have all expressed concerns about the Monday schedule, the extent of the problem makes finding an immediate solution difficult. Mr Smith has repeatedly said that students without a lunch period need only speak up: he is more than willing to rearrange their schedules to make room for lunch on Mondays. But because the problem affects almost 300 students, it may be too widespread to be solved an a case by case basis.

Overhauling the Monday schedule this late in the semester presents problems as well, and it might be logistically impossible in January. Because most courses required for graduation span the whole school year, significant scheduling changes probably will not happen until next September.

In the meantime, while Mr Smith remains committed to solving the scheduling problem on a case-by-case basis, several students have rejected the changes he offered them. Their parents attributed their decisions to two factors. Parents report trying to contact administrators as early as the first week of school, but said school officials were hard to reach. They complained that while staff member were sympathetic they also bounced them around from official to official. This meant that by the time a solution was offered, their children had already settled into comfortable routines. Several parents whose children declined individualized accommodations also explained their children’s decisions in terms of adolescent psychology.

One parent said, “My daughter [was] a freshmen girl,” when the guidance department offered to change her schedule to include a lunch period on Mondays. “She certainly wasn’t comfortable going to a new class, with new classmates and teachers, [several weeks] into the school year.” A new lunch schedule would also require students to acclimatize themselves to a new crowd in the cafeteria, that most hostile of high school environments.

Monday schedules at the high school differ from those on other weekdays because they require students to attend all eight class. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays are scheduled with six rotating block periods. Lunchtimes are scheduled Tuesday through Friday, although to add to the general confusion, they do not appear on the schedules students receive prior to the beginning of the school year. 

Additionally, parents have complained that Monday scheduling problem is not new. Several said students have never had a scheduled Monday lunch period; rather they have been expected to eat during their free periods for a number of years.

Students who complain that they do not have a lunch period on Mondays usually mean that they are expected to eat lunch at an unreasonable time.

Peter Wlasuk wrote a letter to the editor published in the October 19 issue of The Bee saying that his son only had first period free on Mondays. The Board of Education agreed that scheduling lunch for 7:30 am was ridiculous, and particularly onerous for growing teenagers.

Connecticut General Statue 10-221o requires schools to offer all “full day” students a 20 minute lunch period. The Connecticut State Board of Education defines “lunch period by referring to US Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations for the National School Lunch Program. Federal law requires that schools offer lunches between 10 am and 2 pm. The 280 students who do not have lunch periods on Mondays either have no lunch at all (because they take eight classes) or, in the majority of cases,  have a free period requiring them to eat lunch before 10 am or after 2 pm. Their situation is technically illegal.

Federal law also requires students declining a lunch period to sign a waiver. At the November 8 and November 20 Board of Education meetings, Mr Smith said he would be sending out waivers to students without lunch periods. He wanted to apprise their parents of the situation, and obtain their approval. But Mark K. McQullian, the State Commissioner of Education, said that a waiver is only appropriate for situations in which students decline an offered lunch period. A student who has not been offered a lunch period before 10 am cannot logically waive his right to what he has not been offered.

State Board of Education Nutrition Coordinator Susan Fiore said that the state had received “Three or four or five complaints,” this fall, and that “Actually a couple of them were from Newtown.”  Responding to these complaints Commissioner McQuillan issued a “circular letter” to all district superintendents on November 13, reviewing the laws governing school lunches.

In conversations with The Bee last week, NHS Principal Smith said the high school was working hard to comply with state laws. He said the issue had “already been worked through,” with the State Board of Education. He said his best recollection of his conversations with Susan Fiore was “that she said she appreciated that school was underway now,” and that the schedule could not be changed immediately. He said she was “satisfied” with the high school’s intention to eliminate the problem for the 2008 –2009 school year. Scheduling for next year will begin shortly, Mr Smith said, either in January or in March.

But Ms Fiore told The Bee, “The law is the law. The law doesn’t allow noncompliance for a certain period of time. They’ve got a good opportunity now as they go into spring,” she said. “They should be [revising the schedule] for January.”

There are no penalties for schools which fail to comply with lunch laws.