hParents and outside vendors are no longer able to drop lunches during the lunch period, effective starting the 2017-18 school year.

The new policy, according to the faculty, was created for the safety of the students.

“We want kids, once they are at school, to be safe at school and we don’t want kids going to cars and doing this exchange every day,” assistant principal Jason Meskis said.

One consideration is the difficulty the faculty has in managing who exactly is coming onto campus to deliver the lunches.

“It is difficult for us to manage who is coming onto campus and [to know] who [they are], if all these cars are pulling up,” Meskis said.

The traffic increase in front of the school was also a concern for the administrators.

“We can’t have people coming in here, it’s too busy,” Meskis said. “We have 1,560 students here. What happens if we have [all of their parents] dropping off lunch?”

The quality of the food that is often delivered onto campus was also a problem the administrators wished to address.

“[Fast food] is not aligned with our health and wellness [policies]. The district puts a lot of effort into preparing healthy, fresh, homemade food,” Principal Kevin Buchanan said.

Buchanan said that with the extensive preparation put into the food, the administration hopes that students are willing to buy lunch from the school.

“We hired a nutritionist, our cooks are trained by the Four Seasons nutritional center, we expect that asking our kids to bring a lunch or buy a meal here is not an unreasonable expectation,” Buchanan said.

However, parents will be allowed to come to school and drop off lunches anytime before the school lunch break begins.

“Parents can come on campus and drop off lunches in the morning. Parents who didn’t manage to get their [child’s] lunch prepared the night before or [the] morning [of] can come in and drop off lunch,” Buchanan said.

While there will be no formal punishment for these transgressions, the delivery of lunch on campus is still highly discouraged.

“We are going to do our best to discourage it,” Buchanan said, “[However,] kids are not going to get punished [if they are delivered lunch].”

According to Meskis, the disturbance caused by the delivery of food at lunch time takes away from the purpose of schooling.

“The focus of school is studying and going to classes,” Meskis said. “It causes issues when we have a lineup of cars coming in.”

However, some students share a contrary opinion to the matter.

“I think it is really inconvenient for parent who live far from school because they have to drive 20-30 minutes to drop off a lunch when you could just door dash some food,” sophomore Allen Freiberg said. “If you are on school campus or at the library, nothing bad is going to happen to you.”

Despite the lack of any disciplinary consequences regarding lunch drop offs, enforcement from outside the school may be implemented due to issues caused by parents parking on Kanan to deliver their child lunch.

“Parents are trying to park on Kanan. We’ve considered contacting Ventura County Sheriff’s Department,” Buchanan said. “We care about the physical and mental health of our kids and their wellness, so we are just trying to provide them with good meals.”