The freshmen ate in the cafeteria Tuesday for lunch for the first time since entering high school. It is planned to stay that way for the rest of the year, depending how the first weeks go. 

“We felt like the cafeteria wasn’t too crowded with our upperclassmen, so we moved them back to the cafeteria,” principal Joey McQueen said. 

Freshmen had been eating in the gym to allow more spacing due to COVID-19. 

“We had 254 chairs in the cafeteria initially and only added 46 more to make 300,” McQueen said.

Some teachers allow students to eat in their classroom this year, so numbers are down in the cafeteria.

“We have 285 in A lunch and only 265 in B lunch,” he said. 

Freshman Jamie Ball said she liked eating with only freshmen.

“I liked that because the upperclassmen can be kind of intimidating,” she said. 

Ball said eating at a table is easier than eating in the bleachers. 

“It was a lot easier to physically eat my lunch in the cafeteria rather than the gym,” Ball said. “But honestly, other than that, I didn’t really enjoy eating in the cafeteria.”

This change could still be considered a temporary change, depending on how the freshmen and upperclassmen mesh with it. 

“We are going to try it for a couple weeks and see how it goes,” McQueen said. “If it is not working, we will go back with the freshmen in the gym.”