The bell rings. You just got finished walking back from the 7-Eleven next to your high school. You haven’t eaten anything yet, rushing to your next period, barely getting there on time. You walk in about to eat, even more starved from your run, when your teacher tells you to put it away cause you are not allowed to eat in that class. 

This is what a lot of teens go through at Smoky Hill High School, lunch being only thirty minutes is way under the amount of time that it should be. Lunch should be way longer than this thirty-minute time period. According to the Cherry Creek School District (CCSD), lunch for employees is only thirty minutes, not for students, and lunch is only allowed to be thirty minutes for a five-hour day. But with us having seven-hour days, they should allow lunch for an hour or more.  Especially since every class is an hour and thirty, it should be allowed to be the length of a whole class period.

Teachers should also be way more lenient on students getting back from class. With either giving students a longer passing period for lunch or just lengthening lunch by a little bit. Giving the students an extended lunch passing period would fix the majority of student tardiness. Many teachers and staff may not agree with this with cutting class a little shorter, but I feel that they should take into consideration adding on what is normally our “brain breaks” to passing periods. Using our brain break as a passing period would first extend the time so students can get back on time, and give those students that are rushing to eat enough time to eat so they don’t have to in class. 

Classes should be cut shorter for students. If they cut every class five minutes short there would be enough time for students to have a longer lunch break, and classes wouldn’t be cut that much shorter either. Taking off that five minutes from each class would let students have fifty-minute lunch breaks. It would only be shaving off five minutes from class time too.

I believe that making the lunches longer would help with tardiness, students would be attentive during class, and teachers would have more time for lesson planning. CCSD should put more thought and consideration into the amount of time we have for lunch.