Students protest Glen Ridge HS decision to shorten lunch period

GLEN RIDGE, NJ — A planned sit-in to protest the changing of the length of Glen Ridge High School’s lunch period was postponed when GRHS Principal John Lawlor met with students about the issue. But nothing has been resolved yet. Students argue that 30 minutes isn’t enough time for juniors and seniors to leave school and come back for their next class, and that having all grades in the cafeteria at the same time doesn’t leave enough space to spread out to social distance.

“This year they extended our lunch period because we needed more time to leave,” junior Olivia Celestin, who has been organizing the protest against the change, said in a phone interview with The Glen Ridge Paper on Nov. 12. “Recently they decided to take that back, which is not great, because we don’t have enough time.”

Previously, only seniors were allowed to leave the school for lunch as a senior privilege; the policy was extended to juniors this year to allow for pandemic-era social distancing. Students were told recently that the schedule would change because the middle school lunch period needed to be shortened, which would then change the high school’s schedule so that teachers who teach both middle and high school classes could continue to do so. But, Celestin argued, there are twice the number of high school students as middle school students.

“We won’t have enough time to leave, which means that there are more people and not enough chairs,” Celestin said. “There’s less room for social distancing. We’re mostly upset about the reasoning.”

Lawlor met with Celestin and other students on Nov. 15, but Celestin said in a phone interview on Nov. 18 that he and Superintendent Dirk Phillips didn’t answer a lot of their questions.

Neither Lawlor nor Phillips responded to requests for comment by press time on Nov. 22.

The protesting students wrote letters to the Board of Education about the lunch period changes, and the letters were read aloud at the BOE meeting on Nov. 15, but Phillips did not address the issue directly at the meeting.

“The superintendent did email me back and said he understood,” Celestin said. “But he thinks we’ll have enough time.”

Before the schedule was adjusted for the pandemic, the lunch periods were 30 minutes long. But now that the longer period has been introduced, students don’t want to go back to 30 minutes.

“It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now,” Celestin said. “Just because it worked once doesn’t mean it still will. There was never really enough room, and it’s happening again.”

She thinks the school and district administration are overestimating how many juniors will leave school for lunch. Some do, but more often than not it’s the seniors who use the privilege, because they are more likely to know how to drive and have access to a car.

“I think they might be relying too much on juniors leaving,” Celestin said. “I don’t like to myself, because I can’t drive, so I wouldn’t be able to get back in time. The only ones who can really drive are the seniors.”

  FEATURED, Glen Ridge High School