School lunch time crunch for Washington students [Video]

EVERETT, Wash. — When school is out each day, food is the first order of business at Amber Ortega’s home.

“I had to eat my pizza really fast at school,” her daughter Rose said on a recent afternoon at the family’s house in Everett. 

It’s the kind of comment that Ortega hears almost every day as she feeds her two daughters an after-school snack.  “When my kids come home and complain about not being able to finish their lunch, it usually always just boils down to not having enough time,” she said.

On an Everett Schools Facebook page other parents called short lunch periods “ridiculous,” “frustrating,” and “chaos and bananas.”

Eight-year-old Mabel Ortega has a 20-minute lunch period at View Ridge Elementary School, which includes standing in the lunch line and clean-up afterwards.

Sixth grader …