More than 700 MCPS parents, students sign petition, raise concerns about possible changes to open lunch
School board to discuss, take tentative action on policy Thursday
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Ashlyn CampbellMay 21, 2026 12:02 p.m. | Updated: May 21, 2026 12:03 p.m.
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Ahead of a Thursday meeting where the school board will take tentative action on the Montgomery County Public Schools’ (MCPS) rules on whether students can leave campus for lunch, hundreds of parents are raising concerns about the possible impact.
“The issue isn’t just about changing the open lunch policy, the issue is with a lack of transparency, and the representatives want to accelerate the process and limit public conversation on the topic, and that’s where the real concern is,” Jim Turner, a parent of a Walter Johnson High student, told Bethesda Today on Tuesday. “The public has the right to provide feedback on this.”
At least 740 people signed a petition as of Thursday morning urging the district to not make changes without community feedback. Turner, the organizer, said there were several reasons to continue open lunch and changing it without feedback would be “inherently unfair.”
According to a May 13 school board policy committee meeting, the district has had a regulation on “open lunch” since 1978. According to Associate Superintendent Donna Redmond Jones, open lunch allows students to leave school campus during their lunch period. Currently, 11 of the 25 MCPS high schools have open lunch.
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Open lunch can look different at each school, MCPS staff said, with some allowing all students to participate. In seven of the 11 schools with open lunch, its restricted to upper classman.
The 1978 policy outlines that students are required to remain on campus for lunch unless the school had an open lunch rule or if the student government petitions the school administration to hold open lunch and that petition is approved.
Board member Julie Yang at the policy committee meeting asked staff why the policy was brought to the committee so immediately since it wasn’t previously included in the committee’s work plan.
At the meeting, staff said Superintendent Thomas Taylor wanted to explore the policy to look at a “standardized way of approaching open lunch.” At the end of the committee meeting, committee chair Brenda Wolff recommended rescinding the policy and moving that recommendation to the full school board. The elected body is expected to discuss this and take tentative issue on Thursday afternoon.
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According to the meeting, the board will allow for public comment following the presentation of possible changes to the policy, before coming back to the policy management committee.
For MCPS parent Ann Litcher, the issue seems as though the issue was sprung last minute without a clear rationale on why there should be changes.
“There was a lot of missing data. No analysis around the budgetary or operational or staffing impact,” Lichter said. “No data yet been provided around some of the questions that were asked around safety or attendance or how schools are using the program. I was pretty dumbfounded.”
Several board members asked for additional data, while noting there were issues such as safety concerns at play.
“It’s been my concern the whole time I’ve been on the board that there are legal liability issues here,” Wolff said.
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Board member Natalie Zimmerman said some local communities have raised concerns about open lunch related to a large influx of students becoming disruptive.
Despite the concerns, some parents and students said the open lunch are beneficial for issues like students being able to meet with clubs or get extra support in the classroom.
“In large schools like Walter Johnson, where you have overcrowding, you cannot have everybody on campus at the same time for lunch,” Litchter said. “I find it very frustrating that the school system continues to have this push for centralization without trusting the principals and the management teams that they put in place to work with their student population.”
Several students who signed the petition to keep open lunch said the option gives students a chance to build responsibility and independence.
“Open lunch is the only reason I wanted to go to BCC,” Zeke, a student from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High, who has open lunch, wrote in response to the petition. “Open lunch gives us kids a feeling of freedom and lets us go into the real world and learn how to do things like taxes. We need to keep open lunch.”
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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine