Oh, I feel your pain. Obviously, the problem here is, WHY ARE THEY ONLY GETTING 30 MINUTES FOR LUNCH??!!
Don't count on those kids getting 25 minutes to chit-chat, either. In my DD's school, the first ten minutes of lunch was getting the kids to line up and be quiet, march to the lunch room, stand in line again for lunch (even for kids who brought their lunches), and then sitting in assigned seats, which weren't necessarily next to their friends (definitely not, in DD's case). DD regularly came home with her lunch half-eaten, because there was too much time taken up by teacher tomfoolery.
In my day, lunch and recess were not separate things. You ate your lunch, then you got up and went to play. The reason this worked was because many grades used the lunch room and playground together, 1-3 for one period, 4-6 for the next (K had their own area). DD's school was only allowing one grade at a time in the lunch room, and in the playground. What this is supposed to accomplish, I have no idea.
Oh, and DD kept losing her recess because other kids couldn't line up and be quiet. This taught her to hate her so-called peers.
Anyway, I share your outrage. And I don't see any amount of advocacy changing this, because it's a school-wide problem, not an individual one. It would pretty much take a groundswell of complaints from parents to get this changed.
