No!

Margaret McCormack

I think most of us students at EJHS can agree that regulation break is a wonderful privilege we have at our school. Marek Stroud, an 8th grader says “It helps people let their mind settle before the next class, and it gives them time for other things.” This may be true, but have we forgotten something even more important than a longer bathroom break? Lunch is essential to the performance of students in school. But is 25 minutes enough time to eat lunch? Is a longer lunch worth getting rid of this break we have?

First of all, we all need food to live. It's literally impossible to survive without it. Being a necessity, lunch is provided to the students each day of school. On a normal school day (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday) we get 30 minutes of lunch. On a Wednesday we get even less time, 25 minutes. You might be thinking “This is plenty of enough time to eat!” But have you considered that we only get part of that time to eat? If you are a 6th grader, your lunch starts at 12:25. Now, take a moment to think about how long it takes you to walk from your locker to class. I would say about 3 minutes on average. So if we start with 30 minutes of lunch, now we are down to 27 minutes. Then we have to go to our lunch table and wait for our row to be called to get school lunch. That time, plus the time it takes to go buy your school lunch is about 4 minutes. 23 minutes left. Then you eat your lunch. With about ten minutes left of lunchtime, we need to throw away our trash. That only leaves you 13 minutes to eat your food at most. This isn’t enough time. According to atriumhealth.org, you should have 20-30 minutes to eat your food. Additionally, according to health.clevelandclinic.org, Dr. Heinberg says “People should take more than 20 minutes to eat a meal — ideally about 30 minutes — so that you can have an opportunity for your brain to catch up with your stomach.” Now that you think about it, it doesn’t really seem like such a long time, does it? The least we can do is take 10 minutes from regulation break to have a longer lunch break.

Second of all, regulation break is becoming useless. The purpose of our regulation break is to let students have a break to collect themselves and be ready for the day. But how much can we really do in 15 minutes? In a form sent out to __ people, we asked what they normally do during regulation break. The most popular responses were chatting with friends, walking around, using the restroom, eating, and using phones/chromebooks. All of these don’t need their own extra long passing period, because we can already use differents times of the day to do these activities. Specifically, lunch. You can easily chat with your friends, use the restroom, eat, and use your phone or chromebook. The only thing that you can do in regulation break that you can’t do during lunch is walk around. But that leads me to my next point.

Lastly, we have other times to regulate. It’s simple, next year we could make a change to homeroom that allows students to walk around the school at certain times during homeroom. This would allow students that want to stretch their legs for a few minutes to do so, and anyone that doesn’t want or need to can just have a regular homeroom.

What do you think about regulation break? I believe that regulation break is important, but lunch should be prioritized above it. “Lunch and regulation are important parts of the day that we all look forward to during school,” says Sam Thompson, an 8th grader at EJHS. Did your opinion change after reading this article? Let us know by filling out this form!

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