School Cafeteria Reopens to Students

From the Mahopac school district

“Oh, wow!” “No way!” “This is so cool!”

To hear the kindergartners at Austin Road Elementary School tell it, eating lunch in the school cafeteria on Monday was nothing short of amazing.

“They have never eaten in the cafeteria,” said Kindergarten teacher Diane Binns. “This is a really big deal to them.”

For the first time since the pandemic upended regular life in March 2020, elementary students throughout the Mahopac Central School District returned to their school cafeterias for lunch on Monday, March 7. While the schools reopened in full in September, lunch had been restricted to the classroom, where students sometimes ate in shifts.

“This is exciting,” said Caltha, a kindergartner who waited on a brief line to pick up a sunflower butter sandwich, a carton of chocolate milk and an apple. “It’s like a restaurant.”

A restaurant with rules, perhaps.

Austin Road Interim Principal Robert Meyer greeted the children and spelled out the dos and don'ts of cafeteria dining.

“Raise your hand if you need to get up from the table,” he said. “See how clean this room is? That’s because we all clean up after ourselves.”

The students didn’t seem to mind a chore if it meant they could sit with their friends in a big, noisy, happy room.

“This is so great for them,” said Nancy Libertino, a monitor. “In the classroom, one half of the class would eat for fifteen minutes and then they’d switch and the other half would eat. We got used to it, but this is so much better.”