FOLLOWUP: District sticking with split-lunch plan, but offers ‘mitigations’ and task force

By Torin Record-Sand
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

As we first reported earlier this month, Seattle Public Schools sparked controversy with an abrupt announced that all comprehensive high schools (including West Seattle and Chief Sealth) must have two separate lunch periods. The announcement made a week and a half into the school year led to a districtwide walkout protest at district HQ on September 15th. But the district is moving ahead with the change, it was clear after a short discussion at Wednesday night’s special meeting of the School Board, and all schools must have split lunches in place by October 6.

The justification was simple. “We serve more lunches if there are multiple lunch periods.” said superintendent Fred Podesta. He provided statistics such as a case study from Cleveland High School that showed splitting the lunch period led to 31 percent more lunches being served to students, addressing the district’s persistent concerns about ood access. Other justifications were reiterated, such as the need for staff to take their own breaks in accordance with contracts, which were noted in the slide deck posted beoore the meeting.

Nonetheless, acknowledging the community backlash, the district plans some “mitigations” and will seek community engagement. Many complaints were from students feeling that the change would split personal availability and time to use for either extracurricular or personal matters: the ability to schedule a club meeting, meet with a teacher, do homework in advance of a class, or to be able to see friends. Some possibilities include a scheduled advisory time between students and teachers, more flexible choices for students in the time of their lunch period, and shifting club meeting times

It was noted that meetings are under way with student leaders from affected schools to ask them for feedback. Coordination with school principals on the implementation of the plan was promised too. Here’s a slide showing the status of that:

Associate superintendent Dr. Rocky Torres-Morales noted there are many different approaches on how to deal with the change, and these will be left to each respective school implementing the change. “Each school is their own school, there is no one size fits all decision.” he said.

Also discussed: The school lunch change as part of thei overall plan to re-evaluate the high school day this year and next. A task force will be dedicated to the re-evaluation, working on options for equitable access to credit-earning opportunities, protecting time for extracurricular activities, and reviewing school start and end times, among other goals.

The school board’s hope is that this upcoming process will be more transparent than what led to the lunch announcement. “This [the upcoming changes] is a serious topic, we won’t unwrap it like a Christmas gift in April, people need to hear about it along the way.” said superintendent Podesta. The recommendations on revisions to the high school day will be due from the task force in spring 2026.

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