For four years, I was the Coordinator of Student Affairs at a very large public high school. In this capacity, in addition to teaching three classes, I was also in charge of overseeing the school’s 200+ student-run clubs and publications. These groups were the life-blood of the institution; some were serious and devoted to social action and debate, while others were simply organized forums for playing Pokemon and Dance Dance Revolution.  After a rough and long academic day, the students would shed their steely academic carapaces and become their true selves in these informal groups.

Many of these organizations required money: the French Society needs to publish its literary supplement, the Model U.N. needs to pay for bus trips to conferences, the Girls Ultimate club needs new frisbees (or “disks,” as they never tired of reminding me).  The student government would try to fund these groups, but there was never really enough money.  As a result, we would ask the groups to do their own fundraising and this inevitably meant bake sales.

Once approved, the student group in question would set up a table in the halls and would sell a delicious array of hand-baked goods for fairly reasonable prices.  Teachers and students alike could eat a tasty muffin or cookie and the group would get its funding.  And thus we all participated in the bake sale ritual that was as old as time.  Or at least as old as the New York City public education system.

Since this system worked so well, it had to be destroyed.  Anti-obesity fanatics—in the grip of their war on fatty pleasure—were able to promulgate Chancellor’s Regulation A-812 (PDF) at the end of last academic year. This rule forbade all bake sales in all schools—except for monthly ones run after school by Parents’ Associations.

I concede that the goals of this regulation are commendable—a lot of New York City students are obese and type 2 diabetes is on the rise.  Nevertheless, the idea that ending bake sales will lead to a svelter future for NYC kids is risible. This is because:

(1) When students know there are no bake sales, they just buy more industrial junk food at the neighborhood candy store.

(2) Much of the fatty food they consume comes from home environments that are totally out of the hands of the school system.

Most egregiously, (3) the school lunches that students are fed in the cafeterias are golden valleys of tater tots, rivers of fatty whole milk, and bloody ketchup sunsets over greasy pizza mountains.   Here’s a blog with some of the gory details, but suffice it to say that school lunches have become yet another sluice for unhealthy and utterly subsidized rivers of crap food from American agribusiness. They don’t even have ovens—just industrial sized microwaves and reheaters.

So, the state of things was bad starting the year—the banning of bake sales hurt student organizations and, amazingly! an epidemic of thinness had not broken out.  As a result, this week, the Department of Education revised Chancellor’s Regulation A-812.  Did they restore bake sales?  Well, yes, but only so long as no goods are baked.  Here’s a quote from New York Times reporter Sharon Otterman’s piece:

Nine months after effectively banning most fund-raising food sales in city schools, a city panel will vote Wednesday on an amended regulation that will allow student groups to sell items like Pop-Tarts and Doritos during the school day, but not brownies, zucchini bread or anything else homemade.

Here the city is not only failing to promote healthy foods; it is also throwing money at its chosen food vendors—politically connected insiders who have concessions to sell “healthy” foods like Doritos and Pop-Tarts.  Obviously students are pissed. More from Otterman’s piece:

“With the packaged goods, half the profits are going to the companies,” said Anya Lehr, a senior at LaGuardia High School for the Arts. Her club, Model U.N., she said, was having trouble raising the $200 it costs per student to compete at the United Nations. A good bake sale, she said, used to earn up to $500 per day.

The city’s response is laughable.  The aptly named Kathleen Grimm responded to all this criticism by stating that: “[w]e want students to eat well… We have meals served in the cafeteria that meet those standards, and we want our children to eat there.”

I’d like to invite Ms. Grimm to eat the school lunches served at my high school for a month and she will soon see that the crap going into her body is a perfect match for the bullshit coming out of her mouth.