School Cafeteria Design

California has a strange plan for designing schools. My brother-in-law, Carl, had the right idea years ago. The state should have ten schools designed and the plans on file. No new architect for each building. But, that is not the case.

I won’t try your patience with discussing the fact that new schools no longer have covered walkways between wings because the covered walkways would count in the square footage of the school. Nor will I frustrate you with the fact that Alpha was built with the kindergarten classes the furthest from the cafeteria, while the upper grade kids were next to the cafeteria. I would like to discuss the design of the lunchroom at Alpha.

Alpha was a new school but the kids and teachers were from Madison. The Madison cafeteria was built in the 50’s and was a clever design. The bins of food were on a table in front of the servers. The trays were on a track about two feet up from the bins. The food was put on the tray and the tray was slid toward the students waiting for food.

At Alpha the kids slid their own tray perpendicular to the servers. The bins of food were on the server side with a stainless steel ledge between the server and the trays. It was necessary for the server to lean over the bin of food, stretching out their arm to put food on the tray. There was many a slip, not to mention having servers leaning and breathing over the food.

The real bit of genius was the tray return slot. This was a stainless steel slot in the wall. The child, when done with lunch, was supposed to slide the tray in the door and someone on the other side working the “dog house” would grab the tray, scrape it into the huge stainless steel bowl with a garbage disposal in the middle. (As a side bar, I can tell you it was hard to keep workers from running to the cafeteria because no one wanted to work the dog house.)

Whoever designed the little door apparently did not know kids don’t eat much of the free lunch they receive and had never seen a primary child trying to carry a tray of half eaten food and then poke it in a slot in the wall. Tray after tray caught the lower lip of the slot and dumped the food down the wall. The first day, they were serving applesauce.

By the time I got to the cafeteria with my class, food was pooling in a semicircle, four feet across, around the dog house door. A custodian was trying to control the pool with a large squeegee on a pole. Our principal, Jack Netherton, had already rolled out two plastic garbage cans and a cart to stack the trays.

Sad thing? Alpha was the third of three schools built on the basic plan. You have to admire the architect’s consistency.