Beginning this year, Hughson High School’s two lunchtimes for students have been combined into one. This change accompanies numerous staff alterations, including the arrival of Hughson High’s new principal, Loren Lighthall. 

His idea to combine the lunches was based in part on his implementation of single lunches at two of his past schools, Santa Ana High School and Paradise High School. Principal Lighthall said of his experience with combining lunches in the past, “I’ve seen it be successful, I’ve seen it work, and I’ve seen it increase the spirit and the welfare of the school.”

Principal Lighthall provided a number of reasons why merging lunches would be in the best interest of the school. Clubs, sports, and student body organizations’ members will no longer have conflicting lunches, so lunch activities and meetings can be more efficient. Also, if students need to meet with teachers, lunch availability doesn’t depend on whether teachers have the same lunch as their students.

The combined lunch is better for students’ schedules, as well. The school has seen a drop in schedule changes since students are guaranteed to share lunch with their friends, but if students still need schedule changes, a single lunch makes changes much easier for counselors to arrange. 

Some students had concerns about whether they would be able to purchase lunch from the cafeteria and still have enough time to eat, considering the increased crowd. However, according to Principal Lighthall, “We get kids through in about fourteen minutes.”

So, yes, students can have their cake and eat it, too, thanks to Hughson’s hardworking cafeteria staff. Workers in the cafeteria have implemented multiple changes to accommodate the influx of students at lunch. 

“We’ve individualized items that they [students] want, to give them separate lines to go to instead of having a bunch of people getting fifteen items in one line, so we’ve kind of spread out and we added a cart, which we didn’t have before,” explained Elizabeth Acosta, a lunch lady who has worked for the school district for fifteen years. “We used to serve from four different windows, now we serve from five.”

The staff seems happy with the results of the combined lunch, and students do, too. 

Ethan Robinson, a student worker in the cafeteria, admitted, “We’ve heard a lot of people say that the combined lunch is way better, because they get all their friends and they get second lunch [time slot], which most people preferred, I guess. People seem to like it.”