Every day at NPHS students eat their lunch on the floor of the hallways.
The school’s rotating block schedule was adopted to ensure that all students are able to see their teachers during school hours, which is especially important for those who have athletics or extra curricular activities. Due to this, all four grades have the same lunch period. The lunch seating arrangements have caused mixed opinions from students and parents.
The cafeteria itself has been designed with comfort in mind. Mr. Henry explained that the furniture like the couches and chairs in the cafeteria are modeled from the furniture in the media center.
Hesaid: “The thought process behind it was really to provide different options for students throughout the space that can provide comfort as well.”
However, the design does not take into account the social needs of the students and the number of students observed sitting on the floor in the hall seems to outnumber the amount of available seats in the cafeteria.
While the cafeteria has different options of seating such as round tables, high top tables, couches, and a single rectangular table, and while there are usually two or three tables still open in the cafeteria during the lunch period, there’s not nearly enough seats to fit everyone sitting in the halls.
Moreover, often the tables are only partially occupied so if students came in from the hallways to eat they would likely have to split up from their friends, which is what discourages them from sitting in the cafeteria.
Perhaps replacing the comfortable seating with more functional table would provide a more efficient use of the space to keep students from having to eat on the floor.
Many students strongly dislike eating on the floor, but feel like it is their only real option.
Alexis Larosa, a freshman said: “I think it is very unsanitary since people are walking around on the floors all day carrying germs and bacteria.”
According to ungerglobal.com, a company that produces cleaning products, “while a floor may appear clean, more likely than not, it’s harboring potentially harmful germs and contaminants. In fact, the average floor has about 764 bacteria per square inch.”
Judiann Darnowski, parent of a NPHS freshman said: “I think it’s unfortunate that they feel that’s their best solution when they’re not comfortable finding a seat in the cafeteria.”
On the other hand, while there are students against eating on the floors, others don’t mind it at all.
Another freshman at NPHS, Lara Illipronti said: “I know that eating on the floor isn’t the most sanitary place to be eating but I like how it is spacious and every one of my friends always has a seat.”