Superintendents question mandated timed, seated lunch

A new 20-minute seated lunch proposal from the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction falls short on details, according to North Mason superintendents.

North Mason Superintendent Dana Rosenbach and Grapeview School District Superintendent Gerry Grubbs both like the sentiment behind the proposal but say the execution will be challenging.

In April, OSPI issued a bulletin about the possible changes.

"The State Auditor's Office conducted a Child Nutrition Performance Audit, revealing that Washington schools are falling short of the

recommended best practice of providing students with 20 minutes of seated lunchtime. Following the audit, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) reviewed regulations and procedures concerning the duration of seated lunches and will proceed with rulemaking," according to the bulletin.

"Students who have more time to eat their lunch consume more nutritious food and waste less food. Education and nutrition groups suggest a minimum of 20 minutes seated lunchtime," according to a 2019 state performance audit.

"Nearly all 31 schools visited during the audit did not give all students the recommended minimum seated lunchtime of 20 minutes," according to the audit.

"Many Washingtonians are concerned that elementary school children do not always have enough time to eat once seated at the lunch table. This can happen because the scheduled time is too short, the line for food is too long, or the urge to rush out to recess is too strong. Research shows that when students are given more time to eat, they tend to waste less food and consume more nutrients," the audit states.

Rosenbach agrees.

"In discussing this with our Child Nutrition Director, she pointed out that, often times if students don't have enough time, they only eat the entree and miss out on important fruits and vegetables. The extra time to eat and digest is valuable, especially to students who may not get a dinner," Rosenbach told the Herald in an email.

Children also don't learn if they are hungry, she said.

Mandating a 20-minute seated lunch, however, will be "challenging," according to Rosenbach, and the OSPI rule doesn't say how districts will pay for the changes.

"If this is going to be mandated, it needs to be funded," she said.

NMSD has an education programs and operations replacement levy on the Feb. 11 ballot to supplement state funding for things like extra-curricular activities.

Grubbs also agreed that kids should have time for lunch but questioned the logistics of the proposal.

"There is a very significant chunk of the proposal that is not being talked about and few understand the logistics of feeding several hundred children and managing their behavior on a daily basis," he told the Herald in an email.

"The missing link in the conversation is that the 20 minutes would start after the last student got their hot lunch. This would likely add another 10 minutes onto every lunch group. This is particularly problematic for larger schools that may already have 4 or more lunch periods because they don't have space to feed them all. Another part of the problem is that the state previously mandated that students have recess before they eat. When I first started supervising lunches if a student wanted more time to eat they could just take a few minutes of their recess time to finish up. With the recess first mandate that option went away," Grubbs said.

All students in GSD get 20-minute lunches and 20-minute recess, Grubb said. Staff must clean up after every lunch group, he said.

"Additionally, we have a lot of students who bring a sack lunch and other students who are finished in 5 minutes. For these students we now have unstructured time and with that usually comes behavior problems," according to Grubb.

He said students are not adults who will sit and wait quietly.

"The state created a problem and then is trying to fix it with a solution that will compound the problem and in some districts cost vast sums of money for extra supervision," Grubbs said.

At a virtual public hearing held by OSPI on Jan. 14, most superintendents pushed back against the possible new rule, questioning the expense to enforce it.

"To be clear, we all agree that kids should have 20 minutes for lunch, it is in our best interest as a school to make sure a child is well fed. No teacher wants to deal with a 'hangry' student all afternoon," Grubbs said.

An unfunded proposal lacking enforcement details for a 20-minute seated lunch may not be the best solution, according to superintendents.