This year North Arlington High School has extended each lunch period to 40 minutes. However, how would you feel if that period was cut down to only 20 minutes? Any student who is late for first period is automatically assigned lunch detention. Lunch detention takes place in a classroom where students must sit silently for 20 minutes of their lunch period. During that time, food and drinks are prohibited and students must wait until the teacher in charge of lunch detention dismisses them. Only then are students able to use the last 20 minutes of the lunch period for finally consuming their lunches. As a result, students are left with half a lunch period to eat lunch and then go to their next class.

When students are given a consequence for arriving late to school, they may make more of an effort to start being punctual every morning. Although some students may think that this new ramification is unnecessary, I believe that it will indeed better our students’ tardiness issues by teaching them to manage their time better and be in first period before the late bell.

During the course of the year, I believe that the amount of students arriving to school late will diminish because of lunch detention. It is obvious by simply taking a look around the cafeteria in the morning that students are now making an effort to improve lateness records and get to school on time. In the end, lunch detention is going to be very beneficial to our school.