No eating in class but they do have a nutrition break in the morning. Lunch is 35 min, it is not possible to schedule a class during it however one certainly could elect not to eat and to study I suppose. Many clubs meet during lunch and kids can meet with teachers they might need help with during this time, and eat there. Then again, they could go off campus and eat, and many do.
S19âs HS also has a 25 minute lunch (maybe even slightly shorter). Since classes are 95 or 100 minutes, they canât replace it with an 8th class. They donât have study halls and most kids take 7 classes as seniors. No one can leave campus during the school day. Iâm not sure when S19 eats his lunch on the days when he eats it. He sometimes forgets (he just had âbreakfastâ at 10 pm but I think he was just too lazy to do anything about food today and had to leave for a rehearsal before dinner was ready).
Iâm interested to see so many DE classes on your kidsâ schedules. Some schools in our district have DE English 12 and US Gov (the class is taught by the HS teacher for college credit), but there is no other mention of DE on the district website, and S19âs school doesnât offer DE at all. Do your kids leave school early and drive to the nearest CC, or are the classes taught in the HS, or online?
@eh1234 they are taught in the HS.
Also, we have 9 periods, all 40 min each. No special lunch times. Anyone with a free period between periods 4-7 has it labeled as lunch.
Itâs too large a school to have everyone have the same lunch periods.
@romns116 Probably it is too early now to apply for housing. Do you already have UT EID? You are early! 
Our high schools offer a zero hour class to give kids a chance for a lunch break. The problem is the lab period taking up a class slot. My son had lunch last year, but had a 0 hour class that began at 7 am. He would rather eat in the half class and sleep later. The kids have the choice. They can eat in most classes.
Isnât it interesting that there are so many types of schedules? Youâd think there would be some research that shows the most effective way to run a high school schedule and the majority of schools would do that. We donât have any DE classes. No IB curriculum. School offers 28 AP classes. Out of 2800 students, 98 percent go to a four year college. But our school is only one way a school can work well for its students. So many other ways a high school can be successful.
@mom2twogirls Ah, I wish our school had DE options. I think they may be still phasing it in - most parents here are obsessed with AP and probably donât feel that they need another option.
9 periods a day is a lot! Iâm sure my kid would like shorter classes, but not 9 of them! We have a block schedule with six long classes on alternating days and one short (50 or 55 minute class) that meets daily.
Dual enrollment in the state of georgia is paid for by the state at many of the public state schools. While english and maybe math is sometimes taught at the hs by a university professor, you can drive to a college campus to take classes so long as you are accepted into their program.
No DE for either of my sons It is offered at their school , but there is a fee involved and they would have to provide their own transportation. Also , they have much stricter attendance poilicies than our HS which would make college visits impossible during the school year. AP classes are free with no transportation issues to address . For our family , it was a no brainier.
@scubadive We found that the our school discouraged DE for many students, even though there were a a number of options locally (with different age minimums). They said that if students were interested in getting into a UGA or GT, those schools preferred AP/IB, except for a some specific GT options. During our school tours, we found a mixed bag, but mainly pro-DE. In reality, less than 10% of our senior class matriculate to those two schools, anyway. In retrospect, I suspect there might have been other local reasons they push AP.
@eh1234 our middle school has block periods. I forget how many a day⊠I just remember it was a 3 day rotation and core classes would be on 2 out of 3 days and other classes were 1 out of 3 days. And those 2 out of 3 classes? They werenât the same time of day on day day 1 as on day 3. The periods in middle school were longer than high school periods too. I canât remember exactly how long.
It was way too confusing and complicated for me to ever understand the schedule. The kids seem to learn it quickly. But d19 much prefers the 5 day schedule with 9 shorter periods and having the same schedule each day (aside from labs and gym classes not being every day). It makes it much easier for her to stay organized and on a routine. She also feels like she is less burned out on a subject when itâs only 40 minutes a day of it.
We have to pay for AP classes and most DE classes. AP classes are cheaper. No differences in attendance policies or transportation. The benefit of having both available is really just more selection and diversity of options. For example, while she is taking some APs next year (Physics, Gov), instead of taking yet another AP science and AP Lit, she is taking a DE forensics course (which is really a Chem class) and a DE Gender in Literature class. The Forensics is just because it sounds interesting, she loves chemistry, and everyone who takes it loves it. The gender in lit is because she needs to take English classes and that sounds more interesting to her than AP Lit.
The high school I went to didnât have any APs and only a handful of DE courses. I love for her that she has so many options.
Dual enrollment: @eh1234, the comp I DE class is taught in the high schools, but any other DE classes are taken at the local open-admissions regional public, or in a few cases where students are taking all of their classes DE through a program at the local effectively-open-admissions private college.
Eating in classrooms: I canât imagine it being allowed in my kidsâ school district, simply because of the danger to allergic students in afternoon classes from, say, peanut or gluten residues.
Wow! I never really imagined all of the variety in school lunch/study periods. Though I guess I shouldnât be surprised given the numerous methods schools use to calculate GPA.
Here we have 7 periods per day (46 minutes each) with 4 minutes between for changing classes. Each student has a 22 minute lunch period which falls sometime between 11:00am-12;38pn. The time of their lunch varies each day and is determined by the type class they are in (e.g. English, Music, Business). We use a rotating 6 day schedule (yes for 7 period daysâgo figure) so frankly I never really know what class D has at any given time. The kids get it quickly though.
The campus is not open, though upperclassmen can get a pass which allows late arrival or early dismissal on any days when the have 1st/last period free. This year my D is taking 4 AP classes, so she will have total of 3 free periods spread over 7 days. It is the most she has had while in high school.
Ohâand no eating in class due to food allergies. Kids can have water (and more often coffee) though.
My kids school is big, which I am assuming is why study halls are almost all in the cafeteria/commons area where students also have lunch. If you have a free period during an official lunch time, itâs labelled as a lunch. If not, itâs labeled study hall. If you have 2 free periods during official lunch, one is labeled lunch and one study hall. There are no rules stating you can only eat at certain times, only that lunch is sold/served at official times. My d19âd study halls have only ever been in the cafeteria/commons.
In other words, there really isnât any more allergy risk to eating in the classrooms than there is in the cafeteria/commons. Even the study halls and lunches are going to have a mix of people eating and people doing homework. Especially with a 40 minute lunch period, no one takes that long to eat lunch.
@zipstermom in the small school I grew up in, there were 2 lunch periods. Basically, they took the 40 minute 5th period and split it in half making a 5a and 5b. You had lunch one or the other, and the opposite was band/chorus/lab/study hall.
My own high school was smaller than 1/4 the size of the one my d goes too, so I can see why it worked better there and wouldnât work for hers.
Our school is overcrowded. The cafeteria isnât big enough for all the students and getting through the halls from the further classrooms in a reasonable amount of time is logistically challenging. So most of the farther-away teachers will allow students to come eat in their classrooms, so long as they are polite, clean, and work hard in the class. DS did this with the calculus teacher last year and I think it made the difference between the failing grade he was getting at the beginning of the year and the A he ended up with.
@homerdog Right? You would think research would prevail and HS structure would have some similarities. These schedules are all over the map!
@eh1234 We have three choices locally - limited, full-time enrollment in a school within a school at local CC, afternoon classes at same CC but keep own HS as base school and take classes at both, and keep own HS and take afternoon classes at local, private university. This last option is unusual and a special program that you have to apply to - geared toward gifted students and tuition is paid by parents, not the school. The CC tuition is paid for by the state and allows kids to enter into state schools as juniors and is debt relieving. NC state schools are incredibly affordable so itâs a good deal.
Our school is like @homerdog 's except about 1/2 the size. No IB, no DE, 24 APâs almost every kid goes onto college, and those that donât usually enter the military.
Every kid has a lunch period blocked in to their schedule, but itâs a quick lunch, 30-40 minutes. Kids canât eat in class as far as I know, so my son sometimes orders a double lunch because he is so hungry! I send him in with boxes of protein bars that he keeps in his locker and backpack and munches on when needed in the hall or after school. Growing boys!
My kids are switching from a block schedule to a static one this year. S21 was freaking out about having the same lunch period every day with gasp none of his friends there. Fortunately, it seems he has at least one friend to hang with in the caf.
Their high school (small, Catholic) does offer four DE courses in conjunction with a Catholic college in the state. I knew that. What I didnât know until this week, however, was that S19 apparently decided to take the psychology/sociology DE class! The paperwork arrived yesterday. Check is in the mail today. The teacher is the same one he had for APUSH who he likes a lot.
According to the paperwork and some quick research, there are only six colleges in the state that do not accept the credits. Our state flagship (the top choice) does as do the other schools on his list. So heâs good to go.
@RightCoaster, right there with you. My kids require Lunch Supplements to get through the day. LOL!
Our high schools are on a 4x4 A/B block schedule, so kids can take up to 8 classes that alternate each day. Itâs easy to remember, and gives an extra night for large homework assignments to get completed (I think that works better than all classes in one day like I had in high school, where every teacher seemed to give an hour or so of work each night).
I think each class period is an hour and a half or more, and the past few years all students had a 30 minute lunch (staggered during third block). They didnât used to offer lunch before that unless you only took 7 classes, but uproar over how high-achieving students were effectively punished by this policy changed that - now all schools are required to offer at least 30 minute lunch to all students. They arenât allowed to eat in class, just water.
The last couple of months of junior year, S19âs school was a pilot program for âone lunchâ where all students have lunch at the same time for 50 minutes. They can go all over the school, get tutoring, club meetings, etc. S19 loved it (he eats fast, then played games and hung out in a favorite teacherâs room). There are 2400 students, so cafeteria lines were long initially, but kids seemed to adjust and some would go right away, others just wait till line goes down.