This is a message to my fellow students,

Many of you have likely noticed the shortened school lunches, whether through word of mouth or glancing at your schedule.

Hunterdon Central made changes to its Schedule that result in lunch being cut by 5 minutes. To many people, this might seem like a small change, but very few people have the whole lunch period to enjoy. 

This is a 40-minute lunch from the 2024-2025 School Year

10 minutes to find friends, buy your lunch, etc

24 minutes to enjoy lunch

6 minutes to transition to another class

That was a 40-minute lunch and for some people the time was shorter if their class is farther away or if it took them longer to buy lunch when the line ends up being longer on days with popular hot lunches. 

Now compare that to the 35-minute lunch for the 2025-2026 School Year:

10 mins to get lunch, find friends, etc

19 minutes to enjoy lunch

6 minutes to transition to another class

Notice the change, you've got less than 20 minutes to eat, talk to friends, goof on your phone, play basketball in the gym, or do whatever you want to do. This schedule change is taking away our free time at school without any substantial benefit. 

What is at stake is the free time of students to be relieved of learning even for only handful of minutes in a long day. If we do nothing, perhaps we'll lose 5 more minutes next year and the year after that until our's school lunch is just a shadow of itself. 

The time to act is now. We as the student body can do something about this. Many of us only found out when we looked at our schedules and the only time that is too late to act is never acting at all.

If you want to return the bell and block schedule to the exact same as it was during the 2024-2025 school year. In order to lengthen lunch. Sign this petition and pass it along to anyone you know who goes to Hunterdon Central Regional High School.