Many students who have D-block lunches go hungry throughout the day and find themselves needing a snack, which barely happened last year. What’s going on?

There were big changes to the schedule last year along with this year, throwing students for a loop as to planning out their day. For those who are new to this school and unfamiliar with the history of WY scheduling, in the 2022-2023 school year, there were different times for each respective period. In particular, the changes that stood out the most were third Wednesdays. In 2022-2023, the scheduling was similar to dolphin days, only readjusted to account for the early end at 1:55 p.m., pictured below:

Notice that the start of A-block lunch – although placed very early in the day – is consistent throughout the week, only deviating by 10 minutes at most. There was a great deal of discord over this schedule, bringing students like Lena Tran to say: “[A-block lunch] was basically breakfast.” Subsequently, it was changed the following year, pictured below:

(https://www.wyoung.org/apps/bell_schedules/)

The new schedule is a welcome change for those with A-block lunches, giving them lunches that start much later, with the exception of dolphin days, which have gone unchanged. However, pay close attention to the D-block start times. Because of the shift in third Wednesdays, D-block lunches can start as late as 1:15, giving no time up until then to eat. The kicker here is that on top of that, the times deviate by 25 minutes, making D-block lunches not only too late but also inconsistent. The problem in the scheduling department seems to be a choice between forcing A-block students to eat lunches too early, or forcing D-block students to find a way to eat between classes, which would possibly risk losing a significant amount of points on a test due to hunger. A study done by No Kid Hungry found that in students who were significantly more hungry on average: ‘80% observed the negative impact of hunger on concentration, 76% saw decreased academic performance, 62% saw behavioral issues increased, and 47% noticed children getting sick more often’. Having D-block lunch this year will not produce this magnitude of results, but it is definitely a big warning flag to consider.

However, hope is not lost. I propose that the solution to this issue will not come out of a brand new schedule at all, but rather from the redistribution of classes. Consider that if we had 4 skinny blocks, but only 3 of those blocks were available as lunches. This would effectively increase the size of people in each lunch period, but have a trade-off of having all students eat at an acceptable time. The best times for this to happen would be B, C, and D blocks under the 2022-2023 schedule, as this allows for enrichment to be placed late in the day to help clubs. Under this new distribution, 100% of students will finally be able to eat their lunches at an acceptable time.