Power lunch is a 60-minute lunch period where kids can eat, talk with friends, visit their teachers for academic help, and take a break from school. The district offers power lunch for academic assistance and social time for kids at school, but recently the school board has decided to think about making some changes. 

Wentzville School District’s school board members discussed the future of power lunch at the WSD high schools at a board meeting on Oct. 24. They spoke on exploring the “possible restructure” of how the time is used, according to board member Renee Henke.

Possible ideas concerning power lunch in the Wentzville School District included eliminating power lunch altogether, all kids being assigned to staff members during power lunch, “team” lunches (red and blue for Liberty), seminar block days, and restructuring and re-enforcing the rules of power lunch amongst the schools.  The school board has decided to come up with a few ideas and return to this topic at the next scheduled board meeting.

One of the concerns that the board has over power lunch is emergency procedures. If something were to happen in the school, kids aren’t assigned to a specific teacher or area so if they were missing in the case of an emergency they wouldn’t be able to be located by staff. Another concern coming from the board is students’ abilities to make choices for themselves. 

During power lunch, there are opportunities for kids to visit teachers with questions about homework or other academic issues. According to Jen Olson, another board member, students should always be going to their teachers during power lunch and finishing missing work. 

“The kids that don’t are the ones in the gym playing basketball or in the hallway with their friends and I don’t really like that idea,” Olson said. “Nobody can force them to do it.”

On the other hand, the superintendent, Brian Bishop has a different perspective on this. 

“If you ask me as a high school principal, I wouldn’t want any part in this. It’s a supervision nightmare and it’s challenging,” Bishop said. However, Bishop responded to Olson, “the people that are being remediated are usually the kids who don’t want to be in the class anyway. They’re not doing their work because they don’t want to be there.” Bishop said.

On top of that, one of the more compelling emails the superintendent received came from a student at North Point High School who indicated that she had mental health issues and that this was a time for her to actually unplug a little bit and detox and kind of get a chance to reset.

With that being said, Henke believes that this power lunch issue could be resolved.

“Would just like to see it more structured. Maybe assign these kids to a classroom, maybe even stagger lunches, just kind of really enforce that help for the students who need it that maybe aren’t going and make that conscious effort to go and get that help,” Henke said.

As you can see, there are pros and cons to making changes concerning power lunch and not everyone can be satisfied with these changes.

What do you think? Does power lunch have enough issues to make major changes, or is it fine where it’s at now?