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MAHWAH, N.J. (CBS) ― Bergen County parents are floored by a new school lunch policy. Their children were forced to eat their lunch on the floor.

Mahwah School Superintendent Charles Montesano won't let CBS 2 HD in his high school, specifically anywhere near the floors inside. Yet, that's exactly where students have been eating their lunch.

That's right. Nearly 1,000 students attend classes at Mahwah High School daily, and at lunchtime, a good majority of them are on the floor, as seen in pictures obtained exclusively by CBS 2 HD.

The cafeteria holds around 300, some outside picnic tables are provided, and seniors can leave for lunch. But parents and some students were quick to speak out to school leadership against hundreds left to floor dining -- and got nowhere.

"Kids should not be eating on the floor," one mother said. "Nobody should be eating on the floor. Animals eat on the floor."

Added a student named "Samantha": "It's dirty. It's disgusting."

CBS 2 HD was able to obtain and analyze three floor swabs. The findings found "very high" bacteria counts, suggesting a combination of "dirty" surfaces.

And more than that, the findings suggest students are eating on dangerous surfaces.

Renowned microbiologist Dr. Philip Tierno warns 80 percent of all infectious diseases are spread through contact. So when a child touches the floor to sit, then touches a sandwich, whatever is on the floor can then be ingested.

"I would categorize it as stupid," Tierno said. "I would characterize it as primitive, and the scourge of third world countries.

"You may be stepping on the fecal matter, sputum, blood, urine."

Even the local health department decries eating on the floor. In a letter they sent to the school, they call the practice, "very unsanitary." Yet in order for Mahwah High School to lengthen its teaching time, they opted to push all 1,000 students through a single, 43-minute lunch period.

"This allows teachers to go into greater depth in their discussions," Superintendent Montesano said.

The school would not release their own specific results from bacterial swab tests, but a parent forwarded those results sent home Wednesday, confirming the presence of dangerous pathogens like E. coli and enterococcus found in feces.

Since our interview, the school says it forbids the floor dining, opting instead for gym bleachers and other seating.

I don't think ANY party, or even our local Facist, would fail to be outraged by this. This is the kind of thing that happens when government is in charge. With so many schools to look after, its no wonder one could slip through the cracks. Private schools have only to look after themselves, not a hundred other campuses within a 30 mile radius. Mandatory attendance laws are also to blame. If it wasn't the law, I'll bet not one child would have gone there to eat off the floor. Somebody would have noticed that nobody wants to attend the school, and sooner or later would have found out why. In fact, the article says that PARENTS spoke out against this, and got NOWHERE! Thats because they don't run the school system, the Board of Education does. And its not like parents can refuse to send their children to school, they have to go, its the law. There certainly needs to be consequences for the pricipal, and maybe the entire staff, but this proves how letting the government handle our childrens education is a bad idea. At the very least, public schools need to be anwerable to the parents of the children who attend them.

And I don't think there needs to be more regulation on the issue, I'm sure the school broke all kinds of existing health regulations, and they will be held accountable for it too. At least, they better be.

As stated in the article, touching the floor to sit down and then touching your food can introduce many dangerous bacterium and viruses into your food. They even had swabs done to see exactly what was on the floor, and it was a very wide range including some very dangerous sicknesses. Good thing: There seem to be no reports of any strain of Ebola there.

I say they need to care less about class time. I go to school from 8:30AM to 3:30PM, with an hour-long lunch. We have four classes. We still get everything covered wthout a problem. I don;t even have homework.

That sounds exactly like my school, except we have more than 1,000 students. Lunch break is about 45 minutes, and while there are some tables available in the "hub" (a.k.a. our shoddy excuse for cafeteria seating), the majority of students, myself included, have to eat on the floor somewhere in the hallways. It's not so bad, but I still can't understand why we can't have a decent cafeteria. My old school had a cafeteria with enough seats for everyone, and lunch break was an hour and 20 minutes long. Much, much better. We had enough time for class, too.

They could actually seperate the students into groups for different lunches, in the amount of seating they have. We can cram around 9-10 kids at a table that seats six. We add thme onto the ends. Out school has three different lunch periods, with no problems at all.

Cleaning the floor wouldn't help very muhc, since the students would have to walk on it to get to where they're sitting. Much of what is on the floor is a result of what the students have stepped in.