Sitting with Principal Evan Glazer, Vice Principal Shawn Frank and the Student Government Association (SGA) sponsors, the members of the SGA and Class Council discussed two important issues relating to the Jefferson community during lunch on Sept. 4 at the first Dining with Doc (DwD) meeting of the school year.

Weekly DwD meetings provide an opportunity for students to discuss important issues with Glazer and other school administrators over lunch.

“I think Dining With Doc is a great way for students from every class, representing different student bodies, to get together with our faculty and talk about new concerns,” sophomore Laura Chu, 2017 Class president, said. “I love it because everyone is open about their opinions, and we accomplish things like planning new events for TJ and discussion how to work with renovation.”

For the first meeting, students discussed the new Fairfax County Public School (FCPS) nutrition guideline, in which schools in the country are required to provide “Smart Snacks” during the school day, whether in vending machines, school stores, fundraisers and snack bars and carts. These snacks must either be a “whole-grain rich” product, contain at least one-quarter of fruits and/or vegetables, have the first ingredient a fruit, vegetable, dairy product or protein food or contain at least 10 percent of the Daily Value for calcium, potassium, vitamin D and dietary fiber.

As a result, many of the sweet snacks and pizza offered by clubs during fundraisers and breaks on red days may be impacted the guidelines.

“We plan to summarize the guidelines and provide healthier, but scrumptious bake sale recipes for clubs to use. Moreover, we plan to work with local pizza companies to ensure that the pizza bought for pizza sales comes under the guidelines,” senior Anant Das, president of the SGA, said. “SGA knows that bake and pizza sales are in integral part of both the Jefferson community and club budgets, so we are doing everything we can to make sure they still happen.”

In addition, students also discussed new eighth period policies, which have been posted to Intranet by eighth period coordinator Joan Burch on Sept. 4. This year, by implementing Administrative Detention (AD), the school hopes to decrease the number of unexcused eighth period absences.

Through these weekly DwDs, students hope that they can address issues of the renovation with administer in order to maintain a smooth school year.

“One of the issues SGA is going to face entering the toughest year of the renovation is to continue holding events the students love and maintaining that Jefferson culture, so we really hope we can figure out solutions to problems the construction gives us through these meetings to still hold fun events,” Das said.