By Kasandra Robledo, Staff Writer | September 27, 2022
Would the cafeteria and covered eating area be worth keeping? Everyone always jokes
about the school food, saying it tastes terrible, and it’s not worth your time waiting in
line, yet they eat the lunch anyway.
LAUSD is the largest school district in California and the second largest in the United States, so how is it that cafeterias are one of the most dangerous places to be during lunch? The Carson High School cafeteria, also known as the covered eating area, is always either full of trash from the meals or packed with students. Although the CHS cafeteria provides students with what’s expected, the fact remains that it has risks and is missing a sense of flavor.
Some students benefit from the cafeteria as far as food and a space to eat. According to the Los Angeles Times, LAUSD serves around 400,000 student meals every day, meaning about 2⁄3 of students have access to a warm meal that they may not have had before.
Many students at CHS have eaten the cafeteria food before. When asked to rate how the school lunch tasted on a scale of one to ten, 80.2% of students gave a score of 5 or below.
An interesting fact released by LAUSD is that the district has the largest free lunch program with the most benefits.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Senator Nancy Skinner said, “If you’re a hungry child, you’re not going to learn well.”
The importance of food in school is obvious.
As for the cafeteria area itself, it is a great place to sit when you need shade, but it tends to become overcrowded.
Lana Arrevalo, a junior at Carson Senior High School said, “[The cafeteria] gets so crowded to the point where you have to say excuse me just to walk around.”
Other alarming statistics that 87.5% of students agree that the time we spent waiting in line for lunch should be cut in half and out of 80 students that were surveyed, 43 said that the cafeteria staff is not helpful most of the time.
Crowded spaces make people more likely to trip, and when you are rushing, whether it
be to go study or join a meeting, you aren’t paying attention to where you step. School
should be a comfortable space for students to learn as well as eat. It won’t be a comfortable space if students don’t feel safe and secure.
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