{"id":2714,"date":"2009-10-10T06:31:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-10T04:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=2714"},"modified":"2015-02-16T09:02:31","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T14:02:31","slug":"nyc-bans-school-bake-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/nyc-bans-school-bake-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Bans School Bake Sales"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m of two minds about this…<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a health\/fitness professional,\u00a0obviously I\u00a0don’t support having a lot of junk food in schools.\u00a0\u00a0But as a former\u00a0parent-teacher organization member\/officer, I also have\u00a0a\u00a0lot of\u00a0sympathy for student groups and clubs that are being deprived of a popular fund-raising tool.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

He said teachers had encouraged students for years to be careful with what they sold. \u201cThere was never any cotton candy or something like that, and there weren\u2019t sales all the time,\u201d he said. \u201cBut they are definitely a way kids count on to get money.\u201d<\/p>\n

A typical weekday sale, he said, could bring in about $500 in profit. \u201cIf they wanted to buy some uniforms or go on a trip, that was enough,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s the last bit that bugs me… when my kids were in elementary school, fund-raising vultures were constantly hovering around, offering the\u00a0school “opportunities” to raise money by encouraging the kids to sell waaaaay overpriced trinkets and holiday junk.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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\u00a0it.\u00a0\u00a0 Instead, I just donated money to the school directly.\u00a0 Why the hell should I subsidize profiteers by buying junk I didn’t want, just so the school could get\u00a015% – 20%\u00a0\u00a0of the money I spent for it? If I just wrote a check, the school got 100% of it instead.<\/p>\n

Win-win, if you ask me.\u00a0 In meetings I used to suggest that we simply ask people to donate $$$, straight up, vs.\u00a0going to a lot of effort\u00a0to sell\u00a0crap that nobody really needed or wanted, but this was politely ignored (crazy talk, I know… ).<\/p>\n

So what else is there? The beauty of bake sales\u00a0is that they’re\u00a0completely “grass roots”, and are much more cost-effective.\u00a0 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).<\/p>\n

So it’s a toughie.\u00a0 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\u00a0scrambling for ways to fill the gaps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,14,17,28],"tags":[184,972,1174,1177,1863],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9669,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714\/revisions\/9669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}