Space Crunch Restructures Lunch

A space crunch at Darien High School has moved the administration to restructure lunch.

Darien public schools are feeling the pinch as student enrollment continues to rise, and the Board of Education says the worst is yet to come. According to the board’s recent space utilization study, the high school will be hardest hit, with a predicted influx of approximately 100 students in coming years. As a result, school officials are coming up with creative ways to maximize space on a tight budget and a ticking clock, including a new, four-shift lunch schedule.

Enrollment at DHS currently stands at 1,284, with a projected peak of 1,367 in 2012-13. Those figures present a number of space concerns, particularly in the cafeteria, where hundreds of hungry students meet under the same roof at the same time.

“It's quite an authentic mathematical problem, which Mr. Haron and his team took about 32 seconds to solve,” said Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education Steve Falcone.

It took slightly longer than 32 seconds, but Principal Dan Haron, together with Director of Facilities Paul Engemann and a committee of representatives from each DHS department, have drafted a plan that satisfies the enrollment concern and minimizes any negative impact on instruction.

“Given the staggering expense of expansion, we thought it would be prudent for the high school to try and find some alternatives to that cost,” said Haron.

The proposed alternative is this: the conversion of an existing auxiliary cafeteria into three classrooms and the restructuring of the current three-shift lunch into a four-shift program.

Currently, the auxiliary cafeteria caters to the overflow of students and faculty who cannot travel across campus to the main cafeteria in time for lunch. But fewer students are using the cafeteria this year, as the menu offerings at the main cafeteria are well worth the hustle, said Haron.

Shaving two minutes off of each non-lunch period has allowed the committee to add a fourth 26-minute shift. The only noticeable change is that the class during which lunch takes place will extend from 47 minutes to just over an hour. The schedule rotates, so as not to affect a single class.

“I gave it to the math teachers on the committee to make sure everything added up, and I’m confident that it will work,” said Haron.

Haron said, and Superintendent Donald Fiftal reiterated, that while the committee did not reach out to students or parents for input, the high school professors and cafeteria staff welcome the change.

“We will continue to move forward with this concept,” said Fiftal. “This is well conceived, and you can't get more cost effective than zero.”

There’s room for “tweaking,” said Fiftal, but it is likely that DHS students will be four-shift dining at the start of the 2010-11 academic year.