Don’t let the rumors fool you. SMART lunch can be taken at any time. There is no “two year contract” stating Kennedy High School must keep SMART lunch. “That’s why we have an advisory homeroom schedule,” principal Jason Kline said.

“Students Maximizing Achievements, Relationships, and Time” — known to students as SMART lunch — started in August 2014. This year, SMART lunch was reduced from the previous 80 minutes to 60 minutes, and is split into two tutorials. Tutorial A is held from 11:43 a.m. to 12:17 p.m., and Tutorial B is held from 12:22 to 12:52 p.m.

During this time, students are free to eat lunch, study, go to tutorials, attend speaker/visitor events, and participate in school intramurals or clubs. Juniors and seniors have the option to leave campus during tutorial time, as long as their grades allow.

Teachers offer the tutorials in their classrooms and these tutorials alternate different days of the week. During tutorials, teachers might choose to reteach class material, give extra time for students to do work, or provide extra instruction.

Previously, students’ classes were 50 minutes each with the 80-minute SMART lunch. This year, with the 60 minute SMART lunch, classes change to 52-minutes, which “allows us to preserve class time while not restricting or reducing SMART lunch time or tutorial time that significantly,” Kline said.

Jackson Foley,so., agrees with the decision to change the timing. “I liked ABCD lunch better because I ate lunch earlier and I didn’t just waste an hour of my day.”

Other students have different views. Some who participate in sports or after school activities say that they might not get as much homework done as they did last year when they had more time at school.

Sydney Hayden,sr., is concerned with the reduction in SMART lunch tutorial time. She has a lot of work to do on top of her school activities. “I’ll have to spend more time doing homework outside of school.”

Kennedy originally modeled its plan after a high school that set aside 60 minutes for SMART Lunch. “And we (originally) did 80 minutes because we were mainly concerned about the cafeteria lines,” Kline said. “We would’ve started with 60 minutes if we had tested it and saw that all students could make it through the lunch line.”

Although SMART lunch is reduced, students will be able to do everything they were able to do last year, except make it to Iowa City and back.