Library at Lunch

[Sandra Bougere]

i am curious to know how your library handles the children coming in during lunch periods. I am new to the school and I want to have my policy in place before I allow students to access the library.

[Carina Gonzalez]

Lunch is always a mess. It's the number one time students want to come in, yet it's the time we have the least amount of staff, because we're going to lunch at the same time.

The problem is that the administration wants to strictly control who comes in to the library, which means every student must have a pass. My assistant and I used to spend the lunch periods staring at the door, caching kids as they come in and out, and looking up their schedules to make sure they weren't lying. We couldn't get any work done.

My administration is awesome though and are looking to fix this. They are creating a rotating schedule of a library duty, so that every period, a teacher will be assigned to do nothing but check and administer passes. I can't wait!

If you use Google +, we're discussing this very topic there right now! Come on over. We'd love your thoughts: https://plus.google.com/communities/117972083606648197914

[Tanya Sasvary]

At my previous school we had students sign up anytime before the lunch periods began, and we issued the students a pass when they signed up.  We limited the number of students to 10 or so per lunch period depending on how many students we were expecting from study halls - which was usually a lot.  "Regulars" had a laminated pass that they picked up when they signed up and dropped the pass off when they arrived.  We sent the list to the cafeteria at the beginning of the lunch period so they knew who was expected.  The cafeteria was not supposed to issue anyone a pass, since the students should have gotten it from the library.

My current school had a similar system set up, but we don't get very many students from lunch so we are more flexible.