Entering our second year of SMART lunch, we knew what to expect. The kids with straight A’s attending tutorials. The athletes and thespians doing their homework during lunch so they focus on tonight’s game. But what about the students who are failing classes? How do they spend their time? Surely at tutorials getting help, right? Wrong.

SMART lunch was invented to help those who are struggling, and give people an easier way to get assistance rather than before and after school. The problem is, most of the ones attending tutorials have no reason to be worried about their grades. The kids that need to be going to tutorials, aren’t. It is a flaw in the system, and it is hard to enforce.

We need to be mindful of what we are doing. SMART lunch is a privilege, not a right. The worst part is all the excuses. Double tutorials, no time to get lunch, the list goes on. Students seem to believe that SMART lunch will never go away, but that isn’t the case. At any time lunch could go back to the way it used to be, all because some people aren’t using it in the way they intended. There are ways we can fix this though.

How about a way for kids to get access to fast, grab and go food on the way to their next tutorial? What about allowing kids to eat their lunch in other classrooms, instead of the overcrowded cafeteria? Although I believe that there are many ways we can improve, SMART lunch is better than the ABCD lunch we previously used.

If you’re the kid with three sports and a 4.0 GPA attending tutorials, keep doing your thing. If you’re the one who is failing classes and skipping out on getting help, clean up your act. There are kids who need the extra time in order to play the sport that they love, people who need the extra help in order to get into their dream college. If you are the reason SMART lunch has flaws, find a way to make it work. Use it or lose it people.

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Daily time for tutorials and lunch reduced to 60 minutes