April 08, 2010, Tamara Baluja
It’s not even ten in the morning and Krisha Ravikantharaja is getting ready to eat lunch in the Glenforest Secondary school cafeteria.
School only started about an hour and half ago. It is only second period, but already lunch time for some of the students – at 9:50 a.m.
“We’ve been told that school cafeteria is not big enough to hold all the students at once,” said Ravikantharaja, staring at her sandwich glumly.
“I force myself to eat, because it’s either that or starve for the rest of the day,” the Grade 10 Mississauga student said.
Faced with booming enrolment numbers, one-third of schools in the Peel District School board are scheduling lunch breaks before 11 a.m. for some students with no subsequent break until classes end at 3 p.m.
“Actually, 10 out of our 31 high schools have lunch slotted over three periods,” said board spokesperson Ryan Reyes.
Glenforest Secondary is one of those Peel District schools. Although most students have lunch between 11:10 a.m. and 1:45 p.m., around 370 students like Ravikantharaja have no choice but to eat earlier. The school has 1,396 students, approximately 370 students over capacity.
That’s not the practice at other GTA school boards. Catherine Parsonage, senior manager of business development at the Toronto District School Board, was shocked to learn about the Peel school board’s early lunch system.
“Wow! Really? They really do that?” Parsonage said when she learned of it.
“We try not to have school lunches that early, unless it’s a very exceptional situation,” she said. Earl Haig Secondary School, one of Toronto’s largest public schools with 2,000 students, is likely the only school with a lunch starting at 10:30 a.m.
Newmarket High school is also the only school in York region that has lunch period starting at 10 a.m. Ross Virgo, a spokesperson for the board, said a recent influx of students to the school’s new French immersion program forced it to schedule an early lunch. Currently the school has 1,250 students, approximately 100 students over capacity.
Daina Kalnins, a registered dietician and a manager of clinical dietetics at the Hospital for Sick Children, agreed with the students that an early lunch seems unreasonable.
“It’s not fair to these students,” she said.
Although she knows of no studies on when exactly students should eat, Kalnins said meals should be generally spaced out every three to four hours.
“It’s just common sense based on when food empties out of the stomach, which usually takes three to four hours,” she said. Kalnins is also concerned that some hungry teens might overeat when they get home or stop at fast food restaurants. “This is just setting them up for worse nutritious habits.”
Kalnins added children should pay attention to hunger pangs, as energy levels would drop unless they are allowed to snack in class.
In Peel region, earlier lunches are usually scheduled at older schools where the cafeteria is not large enough to accommodate all students at once. There is no official school board policy on when students should each lunch; it is up to the individual school to designate lunch periods. Glenforest principal Cindy Horvath said students are assigned staggered early lunches to address scheduling issues.
Reyes added some students might prefer the early lunch time, especially if they skip breakfast.
“I didn’t ask for that and I don’t skip breakfast. Does that mean I should be getting a later lunch period?” asked Aakash Shaw, another Grade 10 student at Glenforest.
A few sympathetic teachers let them snack in class, but “it’s hard to eat and write down your notes at the same time,” Shaw complained. “I can’t concentrate properly.”
During second-period lunch, most students were not eating. Lunch boxes were pushed aside as most students concentrated on finishing up homework or chatting with friends.
“The upside of having this early lunch period is that I get to study for the next three classes, catch up on my homework,” said student Sheldon Vaz. “But then I’m starving by the time I get home.”
The school has not received any formal complaints from students or concerned parents.
“I just don’t want to make a scene, so I haven’t said anything. But even some of the teachers complain sometimes, so it’s clearly an issue,” Ravikantharaja said.
Her mother also feels 9:50 a.m. is too early for lunch.
“It’s better for the kids if it is changed, but what can we do?” Ranjana Ravikantharaja said. “She’ll bring her lunch home and that’s wasteful. And when she comes home, she’s hungry and wants to eat right away.”
Reyes conceded there are alternatives to scheduling around crowded cafeterias. Some Peel region schools have one extended lunch period, which is then divided into three staggered time slots to accommodate all students — a model clearly not in use at Glenforest Secondary. Ten Peel region schools follow this model, while another 11 have only two lunch periods.
“I just want lunch at a normal hour, you know, after 11 o’clock,” Krisha Ravikantharaja said. “Why is that so hard to get?”
Peel public schools with early lunches:
Brampton Centennial S.S.
Chinguacousy S.S.
Erindale S.S.
Fletchers Meadow S.S.
Glenforest S.S.
Heart Lake S.S.
Humberview S.S.
Mayfield S.S.
Rick Hansen S.S.
Streetsville S.S.
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