Lunch lines often extend far past the “Please Enter Here” sign. Photo Courtesy of senior Lauren Weyel.

  For the 2022 school year, every single student at San Luis Obispo High School has the opportunity to receive free lunch and breakfast at school. 

  The statewide program is the result of an unexpected excess in the education budget. Administrators across the state are applauding the program, which takes away the stigma behind accepting free lunch previously experienced by many low-income students.

  “I think it’s really great that we have free lunch for everybody. It makes food costs less of a burden on families,” said senior Jane Culbreath.

  However, the program also comes with long lunch lines, wasted fruit, and tons of individual packaging.

  “I think we should not take trays if we don’t need them,” said senior Leili Nelson. “We’d be producing a lot of trash if we had lunch at home anyway so I don’t think it makes that much of a difference.” 

  This year, the lunch staff have started recording student ID numbers to make sure students don’t take multiple lunches. 

  “I get why we have to put in our numbers, but it does make the line much slower,” said senior Adamaris Rojas.

  Students have also criticized the take-a-fruit requirement, which was strictly followed last year.

  “I think they’ve got the right idea, but it just kind of ends up wasting food. Honestly, a lot of the fruit isn’t as fresh as it could be, which is understandable given that they have so many people to feed, but I think forcing people to take a fruit ends up with more waste,” said Culbreath. “Maybe we could implement composting instead of people just throwing away perfectly good fruit.”

  Overall, students agree that free lunch is an incredible benefit for the SLOHS community.

  “I just think we should bring back the really tall fences,” said Nelson, “I thought they were funny.”

Source: npr.org