Everyday students are split up into one of four lunch shifts, which is perfect since there are four grades. But lunches are split up by course, not grade.

“I want to sit with my friends, my grade’s people,” Freshman Noah Young said.

It would be easier to deal out punishments, since if one lunch shift made a mess, it would only be that one grade being punished, instead of the whole school.

However, one problem of having lunch by grade is that some classes have students with multiple grades. The classes with students in multiple grades include Study hall, World Languages, Art, H/PE, Math, most music classes, and NJROTC. This is a problem, since classes with multiple grades can’t be split up at different times, and teachers are required to have a thirty-minute lunch period.

Even smaller schools like Simpson Middle School don’t have lunch entirely by grade level, and since LCHS has a larger population than Simpson, this makes lunch periods being by grade almost impossible.

One of the alternatives would be to have forms students fill out around the time they are picking their classes for the next school year and students could list friends they wanted to have lunch with. It couldn’t be guaranteed students would have lunch with all those people, but it wouldn’t be as big a problem for counseling when they make the schedule.

“I think you would… know more people… you’d get to socialize more,” Freshman Will Chamberlain said.

Having lunch periods like this would be good for students’ mental health. Social pressures are the third highest cause of stress of high school students and having lunch with friends can help with that.

People also laugh more when they are around their friends and students are also naturally happier when they sit with their friends instead of sitting alone or with people they barely know.

Students also laugh more when they are around their friends, and according to the Mayo Clinic laughter in the short term can help your organs operate more effectively, and relieve stress. Long-lasting effects of laughter can improve your immune system and your mood.

Finally, teachers that have lunch by the course they teach could also keep the same schedule since lunches could still be by course, but the forms would make it so you had more friends in your lunches.

Making forms for students to fill out people they want to have lunch with would be a great way to let students eat with their friends.