The 2024-2025 school year isn’t the only new thing for the Lancer Parent Organization. President Giovanna Lear, her children and a number of LPO parent volunteers have spent part of their summer remodeling the school store, Lancers Landing.

“We are trying to spruce it up, make it a little more twenty-first century, more current,” Lear said.

From new flooring to freshly painted walls even to glass cabinets used to showcase school spirit wear, Lancers Landing has not only changed its appearance, but the way the store will run. 

“We’re going to serve from behind the countertop instead of kids grabbing what they need and paying on their way out,” Lear said.

While students will still be able to grab their own drinks from the new beverage cooler, they will no longer be able grab their own snacks, instead, all the handling of food prior to payment will be done by parent volunteers.

Due to a mandate from the state, some of the snack choices within the store will change as well to provide healthier options, but Lear said with the number of new options they are providing, it should still be an exciting change for the students.

“We’re introducing lots of new things that they’ve never seen before, so I think it might be an adjustment but they’ll be OK,” she said. “The kids are going to love it.”

Ultimately, Lear said this change stems from a lack of available volunteers to run the store as previously done.

“It was hard for volunteers to keep up with what everybody was grabbing. We had one person in the back [who] did credit card purchases, one person stood in the front and did punch cards and cash and it was just a lot,” Lear said. “We often found that we were running low on volunteers last year and there were some days we couldn’t even open the store because we didn’t have enough volunteers.”

The introduction of the counters to eliminate self-serving will allow volunteers to have more control over what happens in the store and could possibly allow for the store to open with fewer volunteers than previously required, Lear said.

While they prefer to have three volunteers working the store at all times, Lear said it is possible for them to open with only two, the new set-up making it easier for them to do so.

Self-service isn’t the only thing leaving the school store.

Previously, if students wanted to make a purchase with a credit or debit card, there was a $5 purchase minimum or they could purchase a punch card. This year, Lancers Landing is completely eliminating both the minimum and the punch cards. Instead, they will allow credit transactions of any price as volunteers will be using an app allowing them to swipe/tap cards on their phones. This means they will also be able to accept Apple Pay.

“Of course we’ll still [take] cash, we’re just trying to streamline some processes to make things easier so we can maybe entice parent [volunteers] to come and join us back in the store,” Lear said. 

Gallery • 6 Photos

Courtesy of Giovanna Lear

LPO planned out their vision for the new store design on a 3D computer-aided design platform.

The renovation was paid for entirely by the LPO through a combination of donations and school store revenue. Lear said a small chunk of the money went toward the new beverage cooler, the flooring was excess from a previous district project, though LPO paid for its installation and the glass cabinets were found on Facebook Marketplace.

“I had my kids come in and help paint. A lot of parent volunteers have been in here all summer to help clean, organize and set things up. We’ve had a lot of help,” Lear said.

Elizabeth Nolan is the LPO Co-Chair for the Class of 2026 and the Lancers Landing Wednesday lunch manager. Having started volunteering in the school store during her daughter’s freshman year and taking on the Wednesday manager position last year, 2024 marks Nolan’s third year volunteering at the store.

While she loves working at Lancers Landing, Nolan said there have been times in the  past where volunteers have had to limit the number of students in the store at a given time as the store would become too busy for them to handle.

With the new renovations, Nolan hopes the space will be more functional for the volunteers and more user friendly for the students.

“I’m hoping that the students like the new look of the space. Change is never easy, but I hope the transition goes smoothly,” Nolan said. “We’ve been required to meet additional guidelines regarding in-school sales, so our product offerings had to change. I am hopeful that the kids understand and continue to stop in, even if it’s just to say ‘Hi!’”