Here in Georgia there was a law/State mandate passed over 15 years ago requiring
all "teachers" to get a 30 minute lunch WITHOUT their children. In theory
good...in practice...who did they think would be the ones to watch students during
lunch? Our school worked out a system to keep most people happy...at least in our
K-3 grades. Pre/K and Sp. Ed. classes have no choice...they have to have trained
people there with their kids.
However, even though we have a working system now...at first it created a lot of
grief, hurt feelings, etc. A homeroom "teacher" rec'd the duty free lunch. All
others (Art, Music, PE, parapros, etc.) filled up the slots for lunch duty.
Instead of having an adult with each class to watch...now there were 2-3 watching
the entire lunchroom.
The system that our school adopted rotates everyone. There is one floating parapro
who is utilized as a lunch duty person pretty much every day. Then there are two
others that rotate out. I do breakfast duty every morning (my choice) so I do not
have to do lunch duty, but my aide does it one day a week for 30 min. I think
everyone has at least one day of duty. In my opinion, it's still not
optimum...with only 3 adults in there and those adults also have to squeeze in
their lunch on top of doing duty.
I think this was one of those ploys for someone who wanted to look good to voters
back in the early 1990s. Would educators like to run out and eat like many do in
the business world and take an hour for lunch? Sure enough! But the educator
world isn't the business world. We are not cranking out units of a product that
can be left idle or alone for 30 min.
Some schools have solved the problem by finding money somewhere to pay a couple of
people outside the school (sometimes bus drivers) to do lunch duty. We had this
procedure for one or two years in the early days...and was horrible.. We could
hear the bus drivers yelling all the way down in the library. And you know it
wouldn't have been much pay!
I also know some schools kept the "anyone other than homeroom teachers" do duty
policy...and still have some hard feelings in them.
Tony Pope
Library Media Specialist
McHenry Primary School
100 McHenry Dr.
Rome, GA 30161
pope1966@att.net
________________________________
From: LIZANELL BOMAN <lizanellb@MSN.COM>
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Sent: Saturday, September 19, 2009 3:15:22 PM
Subject: Meal/break requirements
This recent discussion about meal and other breaks made me wonder. I found the
same thing a previous poster did, that federal law does not require them. However,
I did find this interesting table as well. It shows the states and what their law
requires. I notice that it specifies 'private sector' so there may be slightly
different laws for schools, but I thought it might provide some fodder/discussion
material at least:
It can be viewed here
http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/state/meal.htm
Lizanell N. Boman
lizanellb@msn.com
currently not working in public education
(but still lurking and learning on LM_Net, I love this list!!)
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good.
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
William Wordsworth
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