The year of 2020 is leaving its mark on the school’s history with major social changes, brought on by a global pandemic. To accommodate these changes and ensure students can still come to school, Dr. Ed Dreyer countered the changes with new regulations to the lunch schedule in an effort to alleviate student contact during lunch.

“When Fort Zumwalt West is at full capacity with three lunches, we have approximately 600-650 kids per lunch,” Dreyer said. “With five lunches and some students choosing virtual, we now have approximately 300 students per lunch.”

With these new lunch arrangements, the usual block day schedule was affected, and the result is now a full seven classes every day, with changes to the order of class periods on early release days. Students will go to class as usual with the exception of attending sixth and seventh hour between third and fourth. This means that students who are supposed to leave after fifth or sixth period must stay the whole day.

“I have to stay in the library for an hour, which is a bit of an inconvenience because I just want to go home,” senior Samantha Johnson said.

While some students might want to leave, Dreyer and the other principals do not approve of students simply leaving the school and have set up a new rule in place.

“Students who are early release for sixth and seventh hour will need to go to the commons during those periods,” Dreyer said. “Students should not go home.”

Lunch changes are just some of the new rules that come with the school’s reopening, and these new regulations are meant to help protect students.