Ending Open Lunch Won’t Solve MCPS’ School Safety Crisis

Submission by Liz Cohen

Montgomery County, amidst our bucolic greenery, winding roads, and diverse neighborhoods, is also in the midst of a youth violence epidemic in our schools. In February, a shooting inside Wootton High School; in April, a shooting in the Blake High School parking lot and a gun found on a student inside Watkins Mill High School; and last week, a gun found on a student at Whitman High School. Student safety is on every parent’s mind. 

MCPS Superintendent Proposes Ending Open Lunch Policy

Dr. Thomas Taylor, the MCPS Superintendent, has offered no concrete plan to curb gun violence. Rather, he has asked the MCPS Board of Education to revoke a 50-year policy allowing high schools to offer open lunch. The current policy allows schools that already permit open lunch to continue letting students leave campus during lunch, if the school chooses. Around 12 schools participate, including the school my son attends, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. 

Local Schools Need Flexibility, Not One-Size-Fits-All Rules

Montgomery County Public Schools runs more than 200 schools serving more than 150,000 students. Sometimes the smartest policy is one that allows for local context and appropriate flexibility. That’s what the current open lunch policy does. Each school community can engage with students, parents, teachers, and local business owners about the benefits and risks of open lunch. What’s right for B-CC may or may not be the same as what’s right for Walter Johnson or Montgomery Blair. 

No Clear Evidence Links Open Lunch to School Gun Violence

The purported rationale for the policy shift is to “improve safety” yet in fact this idea is performative and without evidence that it will achieve anything at all except make life more difficult and less enjoyable for schools happy with open lunch. How do I know this? Because when MCPS representatives were asked at a May 13 policy committee board meeting for data or evidence that this policy shift would positively impact safety, they could provide no such evidence. Indeed, both Wootton and Blake, where shootings happened on school grounds, have closed lunch. Whitman does allow open lunch as does Watkins Mill, where 11th and 12th graders have open lunch. The correlation between gun incidents and open lunch is therefore low and it’s not even a reasonable hypothesis that a student who brings a gun to school does so because of open lunch. Dr. Taylor and MCPS are also attempting to push through this policy without community engagement, at the end of the school year, even as master schedules and staffing for next year are largely set. At that same meeting, Board of Education members asked whether they could shorten or skip the legally required public comment period in order to push through the policy change as quickly as possible. Established democratic processes are apparently optional in the eyes of the Board of Education; community preferences meaningless in the eyes of MCPS.

Open Lunch Can Support Independence and Community Connection

Meanwhile, there are excellent reasons to allow open lunch. As researcher Jonathan Haidt wrote about in his bestselling book “The Anxious Generation”, we want and need young people to have more real-world experiences. The way to build thriving communities is for people of all ages to interact, and allowing young adults to patronize local businesses during lunch is a wonderful opportunity for those interactions. Part of the high school experience is preparing students to become independent adults. We should want more opportunities, both formal and informal, for our students to leave the school building and pursue independent experiences. 

Ending Open Lunch Could Create New Operational and Budget Problems

Some school buildings, like B-CC’s, aren’t designed to provide lunch space for more than 2,500 people. Open lunch is actually part of the school day operations, not merely a perk for students. Removing this option could put legitimate strain on the school and ultimately cost the district more money. Board of Education member Julie Yang remarked in that same May 13 meeting that the district currently loses money on every hot lunch served. How many more hot lunches, and lost dollars, would be incurred if every student had to eat inside the building? For a district facing potentially significant budget cuts, this is no solution at all. Local businesses in Bethesda will also suffer if they lose a significant amount of their daily customers. This policy would thus potentially cost not only the district but also the county if small businesses are forced to shutter and tax revenue is lost.

MCPS Needs Real Student Engagement, Not Symbolic Policy Changes

Montgomery County Public Schools is a district that holds tremendous promise and potential. You want to end youth violence? Offers programs that truly engage and re-engage high school students, like meaningful apprenticeships or industry-based certificates. Create more smaller high schools or magnet programs that appeal to the varied interests of our diverse students. Ensure every student arrives at high school with the literacy and math skills they need to take advantage of the opportunities that await. Talk to parents about what they hope for their student and whether their school provides that. Here’s what not to do: change a long-standing policy that offers a small avenue of independence for young people in communities that have chosen that option so that you can claim to take action. Nobody wins with an end to open lunch, but the students who currently benefit from it will lose. That only leads to more student disengagement and less safety.

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