Hollister
– School lunch isn’t what you remember from your childhood.
Hollister – School lunch isn’t what you remember from your childhood.
The days of crowded cafeterias and lunch trays slopped with Jell-O and mystery meat are gone. Those days have been replaced by pizza slices and lounging in the sun.
Students at San Benito High School face an array of lunchtime choices each day: what to eat, where to buy their food from, where to sit and who to sit with. But even with a large variety of choices, most kids end up sitting in the same place and eating the same food every day.
Just after 12:40pm, the high school is suddenly alive with activity. Students pour out of classrooms and spread in every direction, to “Senior Mound” or one of the many snack bars across campus, or the cafeteria.
San Benito High School has one lunch period and a closed campus, meaning the school’s nearly 3,000 students have 40 minutes to get their food, eat, socialize and get back to class. Most students have designated areas where their group of friends meets.
“There’s a lot of places to hang out around here, but you just gotta find the right spot,” senior James Amaral said. He has his lunch, which usually consists of a Red Bull, with a group of friends next to the student parking lot. They eat there so they can be close to their trucks.
While Amaral and his friends snack on the far side of campus, in central campus, junior Claudia Cruz waits at a table with some friends for the rest of their group to arrive with food.
Cruz sits with about a dozen sophomore and junior girls on covered picnic benches located in the school’s courtyard.
“We claimed the table at the beginning of the year,” she said. “For the first two weeks you have to claim your table and be there every day. Otherwise someone else will claim it.”
Most of these girls do not bring or buy a lunch. Instead, they rely on scavenging from their friends, a few of whom receive free lunch.
“Whatever they don’t eat, we’ll eat,” sophomore Priscilla Sanchez said, laughing.
While claiming a table in the courtyard can be difficult, most days it’s much easier to find a seat at one of the round tables that fill the high school’s cafeteria.
The cafeteria serves around 300 students each day, according to Brenda Pinsonnault, the food service manager for SBHS.
Pinsonnault said many of the students who eat in the cafeteria participate in government-funded free or reduced lunch programs. She said the cafeteria is the only place where a free or reduced lunch can be redeemed.
Compared with their peers statewide, far fewer students at SBHS participate in free or reduced lunch programs. According to the California Department of Education more than half of all public school students in California participate in such programs, while fewer than 31 percent of SBHS students eat free or reduced-price meals.
Included in this 31 percent are Alex Gonzalez, a sophomore, and his friends. Gonzalez eats lunch in the cafeteria every day. He sits at a table with five friends, all but one of whom get free or reduced lunch. Almost every day, Gonzalez said, he gets pizza, which is provided by Mountain Mike’s.
In addition to the cafeteria, there are five snack bars located around campus and four smaller snack carts. The snack bars offer hot food, ranging from french fries and nachos to bagels and ramen noodle cups. The snack carts do not have most of the hot foods available.
Laws from the state and regulations from the school have dictated that lunches on campus must be healthier, so soda, candy and fried foods (even french fries are now baked) have been removed from the menus.
“(The students) might want something,” Pinsonnault said, “but because of the rules we can’t serve it.”
Because there are so many different places to get a bite to eat, long lines are a rarity. About $2,450 is spent on school lunches in an average day, according to Melody Gomes, business supervisor at the high school.
Katie Smithee, a freshman, typically buys her meals from one of the snack bars. Smithee usually spends $3 a day – money she gets from her parents – on either a rice bowl or an occasional slice of pizza.
In addition to the school-provided lunches, there are two catering trucks on campus.
“The taco truck, or the ‘roach coach’ is the place to eat,” said Ellen Pearce, a sophomore.
Some of the money spent each day on lunch by Pearce and other students ends up in the pockets of people like local catering truck owner Sylvia Vasquez. The popular vendor of carne asada burritos said she makes $200 to $250 a day on average. She pays the school $50 a day in order to do business on campus.
Besides eating, students at San Benito High just hang out or talk during lunch.
Senior Chris Flippo said he and his friends who hang out on Senior Mound, a small hill in the courtyard that is typically reserved for seniors, are typically fairly bored at lunch. Their favorite day for lunch is Friday, he said, when there is music and lunchtime activities. This is sentiment that was echoed by many of his classmates.
Students on Senior Mound are monitored by Principal Debbie Padilla.
“We all have our areas,” Padilla said. “We have the zones so that we get to know the kids in our area and can notice if there’s someone I don’t recognize.”
To monitor lunch there are 19 adults – 12 supervisors, four administrators and three support managers.
The supervisors monitor students to make sure no one leaves campus, which is closed so that students can’t leave. Several students, however, admitted that it is fairly easy to get off campus at lunch.
“I leave school for lunch,” said Angel Garcia, a senior. “It’s no problem to sneak off.” He said he leaves campus to expand his food options, typically going to either McDonald’s or Subway.
Even for those students who don’t sneak off campus in search of fast food, the days of sloppy joes and long lunch lines are gone. But the students’ attitudes and the way they spend their lunch period haven’t changed much.
“Sometimes we kick around a water bottle, or shoot the caps off,” said Courtney Day, a sophomore. “Other than that, there’s nothing else to do.”
Alice Joy covers education for the Free Lance. You can contact her at (831) 637-5566 ext. 336 or at
aj**@fr***********.com
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