NYC Bans School Bake Sales

Posted By elissa on Oct 10, 2009 | 2 comments

I’m of two minds about this…

In an effort to limit how much sugar and fat students put in their bellies at school, the Education Department has effectively banned most bake sales, the lucrative if not quite healthy fund-raising tool for generations of teams and clubs.

The change is part of a new wellness policy that also limits what can be sold in vending machines and student-run stores, which use profits to help finance activities like pep rallies and proms.

As a health/fitness professional, obviously I don’t support having a lot of junk food in schools.  But as a former parent-teacher organization member/officer, I also have a lot of sympathy for student groups and clubs that are being deprived of a popular fund-raising tool.

With the changes, school administrators and teachers who oversee student clubs are laboring to come up with other easy ways to raise money, particularly at a time when school budgets are being cut.

John Sommers, the assistant principal of organization at La Guardia, said that all fund-raisers using food were on hold for now.

He said teachers had encouraged students for years to be careful with what they sold. “There was never any cotton candy or something like that, and there weren’t sales all the time,” he said. “But they are definitely a way kids count on to get money.”

A typical weekday sale, he said, could bring in about $500 in profit. “If they wanted to buy some uniforms or go on a trip, that was enough,” he added.

Mr. Sommers said he was trying to figure out other ways for students to raise money, perhaps by selling T-shirts or key chains. (All of which are decidedly more expensive to produce than a box of brownies.)

It’s the last bit that bugs me… when my kids were in elementary school, fund-raising vultures were constantly hovering around, offering the school “opportunities” to raise money by encouraging the kids to sell waaaaay overpriced trinkets and holiday junk.  The stuff was always heavily marked up, so the companies were guaranteed a handsome profit, while the schools got a small percentage of the sales in exchange for doing all the work.  I absolutely refused to let my kids sell this stuff (not that they were real eager to do so, anyway) and – likewise – I refused to buy any of it.   Instead, I just donated money to the school directly.  Why the hell should I subsidize profiteers by buying junk I didn’t want, just so the school could get 15% – 20%  of the money I spent for it? If I just wrote a check, the school got 100% of it instead.

Win-win, if you ask me.  In meetings I used to suggest that we simply ask people to donate $$$, straight up, vs. going to a lot of effort to sell crap that nobody really needed or wanted, but this was politely ignored (crazy talk, I know… ).

So what else is there? The beauty of bake sales is that they’re completely “grass roots”, and are much more cost-effective.  It’s a snap to get parents to donate cookies and brownies, after all, and individual treats are cheap (which guarantees brisk sales – everyone can buy something).

So it’s a toughie.  I appreciate the Education Department’s desire to limit unhealthy food in the schools… but alternatives should have been put in place BEFORE the ban, vs. leaving student groups scrambling for ways to fill the gaps.