The first week of lunch service has now reached an end here at North, and students are still left wondering over the new options in place during the blocks 3 & 4 lunch blocks. The new options include a portable snack bar that is set up between the 2200s and 2100s hallways and allowing students to eat their lunches on the turf football field and the surrounding bleachers.
Students were surprised to hear about the new destinations for food service and sitting during their grade level meeting with their respective assistant principle throughout the week. The snack bar, which includes a newly installed countertop on a nearby wall for students to eat on, was the main focus of student concern.
“I think that it gotten better,” senior Edwin Soto said, “but the one drawback is that so many people are coming to one lunch period and are slowing down the line.” Soto also said in regards to the countertop, “nobody would want to stand up and eat in the hallway; they would want to sit down and eat.”
Traffic problems are no longer limited to the Garden State Parkway, according to some MHSN students; the snack bar seems to be slowing down the flow in the common space that connects two of the major upstairs hallways. “I hate it because it takes up the hallway my locker is by and all the kids crowd around,” said junior Carmen Ploe.
“There’s a wider variety, but it still isn’t good enough,” senior Jesse Scala said, “it increases traffic in the hallway.”
As the weather is still fair in September, some students are concerned that the extension of student range to the football field during lunch, a move to give students more space, would prove less effective in the winter months. “It’s not bad when it’s not raining,” senior Matt Menture said, “ [but] every other place there’s going to be crowds of people [when there is bad weather].”
Some students are still optimistic that the new systems introduced may still workout. “As long as kids are behaving, its good,” senior Nick Rendo said, “I think there has to be a better system to keep [the hallways] clear.”
