BEAUMONT — The cafeteria on Beaumont United High School’s campus may look spacious when it’s empty but it quickly becomes crowded when more than 2,000 hungry students show up for lunch.
Now that Central and Ozen High Schools have been combined to become Beaumont United on what was the Ozen campus there's a bigger need for space.
Michael Cooper says when his daughter graduated recently from Ozen High School the cafeteria needed to be renovated.
“Beaumont United is an old campus, an old Ozen, Hebert, you have three different schools thats there," Cooper said.
"We're moving in the right direction and we need to continue that process, but we don’t need to digress and go backwards and spend money on anything else than improvement," he said.
The Beaumont ISD board voted unanimously to move forward with the plan to expand the cafeteria.
“We knew that we were going have to expand it so we're moving into phase two," board president Vernice Monroe said.
Monroe says the expansion, which will add a new structure in the rear of the current one, will make the cafeteria larger.
"With the expansion of the cafeteria we will be going from four lunch periods to three lunch periods," she said.
The project will be paid for with the district’s general and child nutrition funding.
"We need to spend every dime, volunteered, given, donated or coming from the cafeteria program. We need to spend it all on revamping our campuses," Cooper said.