Every student at Calabasas High understands the struggle of the dreaded off-campus line. What’s supposed to be a short break from school, a privilege, turns into a battle of patience, time, and sometimes even elbows. With only 37 minutes of lunch, students are left wasting time stuck in a poorly managed system that feels more like airport security than a school campus.
The management of these lines is disorganized. Usually, students are able to exit through multiple points on campus: the H-Building hallway, the senior trail, and the most difficult of all, the front gate. Each has an average of two staff members scanning IDs and monitoring exits. But lately, the trail and H-Building have been lacking consistency when it comes to being open.
“The H-Building and senior trail will be unavailable as an exit for lunch today,” echoes over the loudspeakers on campus.
Hundreds of students funnel through the front gate. The “line” is hardly a line, with ten feet of fencing intended to keep students in organized sections, accompanied by the chaos of kids pouring in from the sides. Staff members equipped with iPads scan student IDs one at a time, making sure the rectangular pieces of plastic are aligned properly with the displayed grid. Last year, the process was faster with Five Star, an app that lets students check out using their phones. But with the school’s new restrictions, being unable to use phones from the minute the 1st period bell rings to the 7th period, we’ve been pushed back to plastic IDs, creating a jam that is painfully slow. What used to take a few minutes now eats up nearly a third of students’ lunch. Students across grade levels shared the same complaints.
“I definitely see other schools going through, in and out,” says junior CHS student Charlie Hakimi. “Long lines take away from our personal time, which is not fair towards the students. The staff needs to work harder to get everybody out.”
Hakimi added that “switching to a new system” would improve the process.
Seniors, who should be enjoying their final year with off-campus privileges, are also fed up.
“These lines take out 10 minutes of lunch,” says senior Sophia Campanella. “There’s people shoving, there’s no organization, and it’s just really frustrating. Yesterday, they only had one exit, and it was so insane.”
Interestingly enough, staff see the problem from another angle. Tatiana Garcia, who checks students out during lunch, says students make the problem even worse.
“One of my biggest challenges is managing the manner in which kids exit. Sometimes students are impatient and will push,” said Garcia.
She also acknowledged that the setup plays a role:
“It’s usually the way we set up at lunch, the barricades that slow students. But even then, they push right past. Some even pick up the whole barricade. Maybe if we had more staff to reinforce them properly, things would be different,” said Garcia.
The problem is clear: the system doesn’t work. Students have 37 minutes to get from class to the gate, then walk 5 minutes or so to the senior lot or nearby streets where their cars are parked, drive to Gelson’s or Elco, order food, eat, and return on time. With the current system, it’s nearly impossible. Solutions aren’t complicated. Keep the exits open consistently, or consider assigning more staff to speed up the process and keep order. Students deserve a break in the middle of their day that doesn’t feel like an endurance test. The off-campus line shouldn’t be a war zone. It should be what it was intended to be, a privilege that gives students a breather, not a burden that steals it away.
