<p>Open lunch takes place during school hours. Therefore, the school is responsible for the students’ safety. Arrival and departure take place outside of school hours.</p>
<p>At the high school my son attended, which has open lunch (walking only) for juniors and seniors, administrators and security personnel are stationed outside the building during lunch to make sure that the kids use the crosswalks when going to the shopping center across the street to eat. The security people will even stop traffic on the street to let a large batch of students cross. But at arrival and dismissal times, when the traffic situation is far worse because of all the cars dropping off and picking up students, the kids were on their own until this year, when the school finally gave in and put staff members at the main crosswalk to direct traffic.</p>
<p>My kids have an open lunch due to overcrowding. However, local cops drive all around the school giving students tickets for any type of infraction. I honestly can’t believe that that they are doing this for the safety of the students, just to make extra $$ for the town. The things the kids get ticketed for are crazy (parking too far from curb, etc.)</p>
<p>“the lunch hour accident is somehow even more senseless, as it could have been prevented if the school did not allow the kids to leave for lunch.”</p>
<p>In my view, it could also have been prevented by enforcement of traffic laws, or by keeping cars on campus during lunch, or by parents not handing over cars to teenagers like they are a birthright. Seems to me that walking outside is a normal activity that shouldn’t be restricted because a crazy driver might run you over. </p>
<p>“local cops drive all around the school giving students tickets for any type of infraction”</p>
<p>Sounds like a great idea. Let the local cops know that they could make a fortune patroling around the school. They may be doing it for the money, but kids are likely to slow down. Especially since the school could easily make a rule that any student who gets a moving violation within XYZ yards of the school on a weekday has driving/parking privileges suspended.</p>
<p>High schools in my district used to have open lunch, but several years ago they went to closed campus–for safety and security reasons, I imagine. There isn’t really anything (restaurants, stores) within walking distance. I think the biggest concern was giving drug dealers fewer opportunities.</p>
<p>We had open lunch when I was in HS–it was a large very crowded public school (3000 students). A lot of kids hated the cafeteria scene. One year I scheduled classes straight through the day so I wouldn’t have to go to lunch.</p>
<p>The area surrounding my kids high school has a corn field on one side, the middle school on another, scattered houses on the other two. The one fast food place that’s at least five minutes away is already busy with local adult traffic, so an open campus would means kids flying out of the parking lot to race to the Burger King, stand in line for twenty minutes and then try to stuff down their meal on the way back to school. I work at a library down the street from the school and we also get 30 minutes for lunch. There’s no way I would try to back and forth to town for lunch.</p>
<p>Unless there is a long lunch period, overcrowding, or several fast food places within a block or two, I don’t know why schools would allow kids to leave the property.</p>
<p>When I was in HS, I lived across the street from the school and went home everyday.</p>
<p>When our school was renovated lately they put in a courtyard with the idea that in nice weather the kids could sit there but after the school shooting in Lancaster they closed it off. Every time there is a school shooting they attempt to lock the schools down tighter and tighter. My opinion is they think that parents will feel safer, or at least they will be covered for lawsuits.</p>
<p>Our hs has recently initiated a series of restrictive measures to make the 2-building campus “safer,” but I must admit I don’t know how safe any public place can be made against individuals bent on doing harm. Examples: visitors to the school, including parents, used to be required to go directly to the office to sign in and get a visitor’s badge; now a hall monitor is stationed at a table immediately inside the door and performs the sign-in procedure there. (They seem to have been instructed to be as curt, even hostile, as possible, even to matronly 50-something moms who are obviously not concealing weapons in their teeny little handbags)</p>
<p>Only one door in each building is open between classes, yet students must travel between buildings on legitimate business (library and counselors’ office in one bldg., nurse and study halls in the other) during class time, so they must take the long way around to go from point A to point B.</p>
<p>The school has recently announced that they’ll institute student ID swipe cards for building access this year (at no little expense to the taxpayer). This seems a little Big Brother to me. I wouldn’t object to any of these measures if they could be shown to have a truly protective effect. But would any of them have deterred the tragedies in Lancaster, PA or Columbine?</p>
<p>I know that people have said in this thread and in others that teenagers shouldn’t automatically get cars, etc., but sometimes it is necessary.</p>
<p>For instance, our high school starts at 7:20. That means, the kids would need to get on the bus at 6:30am. In the northeast, 6:30am means it’s still dark out, and that they would have to get up around 5:30 or so, and then walk the few blocksat about 6:15am to the bus stop in the dark.</p>
<p>With cars, they wake up later (6:00 or so) and then leave the house at around 6:50-55 and drive the 8 miles to school.</p>
<p>It also means that they can leave school and drive to their respective practice field (whether it is soccer, tennis, lacrosse, etc …) and they would have a car to drive home from practice in. Our school does not provide transportation for the kids home after these activities. So, if they don’t drive home…then they are waiting for parent’s to come and get them which could mean an hour or so of waiting for the parent to come home from work.</p>
<p>Also, if they have an away game, the bus only brings the kids home to the high school…they would have no way of getting home if they didn’t have cars.</p>
<p>It also gives kids the freedom if they don’t have a varsity sport, then to get a job after school.</p>
<p>So, cars aren’t a privilege where we live…it is a necessity.</p>
<p>wecandothis- our high school is similar to yours. Until this year all students were free to leave for lunch. Last year after complaints from the shopping center across from the school they changed the rule to only juniors and seniors. It is not easy for the school to enforce. They try to catch them if they are walking but if they get in a car with an older student it is pretty easy to get out.
The lunch period is only 30 minutes but the students still leave campus by car and try to get lunch and be back on time. I do know there are lots of tardies after lunch. It is only possible to drive, get lunch, eat it as you drive, park and walk to class in 30 minutes if everything goes smoothly. I actually don’t think it is possible. There is one fast food place nearby but most of the places are one or two freeway exits away. Since the school is right next to the freeway it does help. My own dear sweet child had a huge problem last semester getting back on time. He had quite a few afternoons spent in detention.
Maybe open lunch is a Ca public school thing.</p>
<p>Wow, and I thought students who got to leave school in the middle of the day was one of those things they made up for movies set in high schools to make them more interesting. God forbid you set a single foot out of doors during the school day at my high school. Then again, we had 22 minutes for lunch so you’d pretty much get out to your car in the parking lot and have to turn around and go back again. There’s nothing around but a Wawa across the street, anyway. </p>
<p>And at lunch, you had to be in the cafeteria. Not in the library or a computer lab or the art room or some random teacher’s room or wandering the halls or in a class because you wanted to opt out of your scheduled 9:50 lunch since you never actually ate anything anyway…you were in the cafeteria, period. I know in middle school, a only few people at a time were allowed to leave during lunch to use the bathroom…I think we weren’t allowed to leave at all in high school, but the cafeteria aides pretty much looked the other way if you were a minute late, so you could use it beforehand. I always got stuck in the first lunch which started at 9:50 and most people I know didn’t even eat…if you bothered to get in line to get food, unless you made a point of nearly running to the cafeteria to get to the front of the line, you’d end up getting back to the table about 5 minutes before the bell rang.</p>
<p>Increased school security is an unfortunate fact of life these days. In Green Bay a student at one of the high schools fortunately told of a plan involving guns and bombs by a few students, leading to preventing a disaster such as experienced by other schools. Locking all the doors except for the main entrance means going around block long school buildings to enter during the lunch hour, when most doors and the easy routes for walkers are on the other side; you also notice weather related activity- too cold for many this month. There are no outdoor spaces such as a courtyard to be outdoors without students straying off the grounds.</p>
<p>Some parents were arguing for a closed campus last year, they worried about truancy among other things. Smokers need to leave campus to do their thing, and will find ways. Truant kids will leave against the rules. When son was a freshman I was concerned, but he always ate in the cafeteria, the change was in usually buying instead of bringing his lunch (the closed campus middle school had 3 lunch periods in 2 class periods’ time, longer lunch lines with less time to eat). I couldn’t sign for permission for him to skip the study hall he ended up with right after lunch second semester senior year (by then he’d run out of desirable classes that fit his schedule), he would have enjoyed being at home longer- open campus for lunch could not extend to study hall.</p>
<p>Cars are never a necessity, but a real convenience for students living far from the school- those parents are especially happy to acquire cars for their 16 year olds’ use. I’ve seen the posted school bus routes- some outlying kids get on the bus around 6 am for a 7:30 am start, probably close to an hour or more on a bus- the bus budgets and logistics for only a few students are the reason- we could leave at 7:25 to get son to school on time by car, unfortunately more times than we preferred. When son was in elementary school, 1-2 miles away, I once drove him to school only to find school was closed due to the extreme cold and the concerns for kids needing to wait outdoors for busses (the district didn’t selectively close schools with outlying kids; the school districts surrounding the city are closed far more often due to bussing issues and weather).</p>
<p>I’ve seen the tv shows featuring CA schools having schools with multiple buildings and kids outdooors between classes, does this occur anywhere else? It’s a lot different than open lunch hours, which is the only way to be outdoors during the school day here, given the climate, kids swarm outside the first nice days of spring.</p>
<p>The schools that all of my Ds attended had “open lunch” policies. It amazes me that so many schools do not! I honestly don’t see the point of keeping kids on school grounds like prisoners during the course of the day.</p>
<p>New drivers frequently get in car crashes, and when this happens parents are always looking for someone or something to blame. If this has happened because a student was driving to school or the morning, or driving home after school, the parents would have a harder time figuring out who to blame.</p>
<p>If the school wants to try to limit the deaths from wreckless driving they should install speed bumps and have patrol cars posted when students are known to be arriving or leaving.</p>
<p>^^ I don’t think the speed bump idea will work in most places. My high school is located right on the intersection of two major streets. Adding speed bumps would not solve anything, and patrol cars cannot just be posted casually on a busy 3-lane street either.</p>
<p>How about they have an open campus for lunch, but put a gate around the parking lot and leave the parking lot gates closed? So the students can leave, but they can’t get their car out of the lot at lunch time. They either have to walk, or they have to park off campus in the first place (avoiding congestion in a single area).</p>
<p>“How about they have an open campus for lunch, but put a gate around the parking lot and leave the parking lot gates closed? So the students can leave, but they can’t get their car out of the lot at lunch time. They either have to walk, or they have to park off campus in the first place (avoiding congestion in a single area).”</p>
<p>Some schools are not near any food establishments…like mine. The nearest one is 2-3 miles away. Walking would not help…</p>
<p>It really depends on the school, there is not a universal simple solution. Accidents happen, even with adults who are rushing.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the input and suggestions- I don’t think you can just lock up the parking lot, as some that are parked there may have legitimate reasons for leaving…also parent volunteers might be parked in there and then they couldn’t get out.
It will be interesting to see if this school will change its open lunch policy.</p>
<p>I do agree that cars are handed out way more freely to teenagers now than in my day, and that certainly contributes greatly to the accident/risk factor, and general traffic congestion around schools. </p>
<p>Marian- great comeback about the “wreckless” driving…I second that!</p>
<p>anyway, I’m a paralegal student (and parent of 2 teenagers) and I just used the link from Jack in one of my assignments…</p>
<p>it really seems to be a little bit murky legally as to who is liable/responsible for students on lunch hour. I googled “school liability during off campus lunch” and came up with many links to the various ways schools try to sign off on liability for students who are off campus during the school day. </p>
<p>However, the school in question in the incident I described does not have anyone sign a form, to my knowledge, agreeing to the waiver of liability. There is a short statement in the family handbook about the "Open Campus’ at lunch, but nothing about liability issues, signing a waiver, or anything. </p>
<p>Anyhow, thanks for all the excellent input… there doesn’t seem to be any one right answer here though. I do hope the school in question will modify its policy. Too bad it takes a tragedy of this nature to get something done to improve the situation.</p>
<p>My high school never had open campus for lunch. Until the last few months of my senior year, they didn’t really watch the cafeteria boundaries.</p>
<p>Then, a few people (including a good friend of mine) were caught in the hallways eating. They began to gate off all but one of the entrances.</p>
<p>I used to escape through the one they didn’t gate off all the time. It was like stealing a base–gotta check the pitcher, gotta check the assistant principal. I’d pretend I was using the vending machine and then just run. Or I’d just start off in another room. But I had legit reasons to leave the cafeteria–I was the school’s student computer technician so I was likely fixing a computer if I left. If not that, I was in the TV studio working on something.</p>
<p>The reason a lot of people, including me and my aforementioned friend, were upset about this gating off is because our lunch periods were divided into three sections. Often we didn’t have any close friends at a lunch table or the friends we did have there were off on another tangent (i.e. honors physics at my table…I wasn’t even taking science as a senior…and I’d usually leave for no reason if they started talking philosophy because I freaking hate philosophy). Today it is pretty common for students to show up in locations such as the band room instead of going to the cafeteria in the first place.</p>
<p>The only time there was ever an open lunch hour was during sports practices or band camp. Sports players and band members were allowed to leave during the lunch break, but that was due in large part to the fact that band camp and practice for some sports happened before school started and the cafeteria folks weren’t there yet.</p>
<p>As far as general security–visitors need a visitor’s pass and that’s about it. I’ve even managed to get in without the visitor’s pass without anything happening to me, but being a recent graduate probably is why I can get away with that. 95% of the teachers know me and like me, and I have about 35 close friends there who haven’t graduated yet.</p>