The area at the south end of the West Seattle High School Commons/lunchroom used to be part of the stage before the school was remodeled. The floor space was largely unused. But this week that all changed as ping pong tables, foosball tables and tables for chess boards plus couches and more were brought in through grants from the YMCA and WSHS PTSA. The ping pong tables are from the P.E department now but will be replaced with new ones soon.

The PTSA grant was for $1200. The YMCA grant was for $2500.

Ruth Medsker, just named to the Principal's job on a permanent basis said, "The idea is to try and give them other activities to keep kids on campus."

The foosball tables were funded by the YMCA grant, "This is the first week we've had this, and my leadership students are helping to monitor it, " said Craig Richardson WSHS Activities Coordinator, "So I'm out here getting things worked out." Richardson said that students have said they enjoy having something to do at lunchtime.

"They can learn sportsmanship skills, how to take turns and how to work with each other and it can defuse situations where they might argue but they don't because they are following the rules of the student lounge," he said.

The rules are:

Be respectful of other people and furniture
Be safe and careful with game equipment
No food or drink allowed
Take turns
Ping Pong: 2 person or 4 person games allowed. Winner(s) stay at the table. Form a line to play winner(s). Games up to 11 points max.
Ping pong and foosball tables are open only at lunch
Return equipment to the ASB Lounge Monitors or Administration at the end of lunch.

YMCA Coordinator Anne Powell at WSHS said, "We are a partner here in the school full time and one of things that came up that we could do to support the school was the idea for student lounge. One of the contributions that we feel we can make is to build community within our student body and provide opportunities for the students to make positive choices. We've had chess at lunch for the past 2 1/2 years so it seemed to make sense to bring in other activities the students could do and next week we will have staff after school supervising the lounge so the students can come then too."

Also in the budget is the ability to hire staff to "facilitate activities in school or out of school," as part of their entire programming budget, Powell said. She was quick to point out that another space at the school that might be considered an "annex" to the lounge is in the back of the library and it has a Nintendo Wii video game. Students also go there during lunch. The Wii will be available in the main lounge in the afternoons once the supervisory plans are in place.