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a thousand words
November 13, 2009
High school students bring the bake sale ban protest to City Hall
Students from several high schools were joined by City Councilman Robert Jackson for a protest of the city’s recent ban on bake sales during the school day. Jackson, who chairs the Council’s education committee, signed the students’ petition and then partook of a few chocolate chip cookies.
Most of the students came from LaGuardia High School, Bronx Science, or the Beacon School. Though they had picked a cold and windy day to sit on the City Hall steps with boxes of cookies, they were upbeat and joked about their alternatives. One student held a sign (photo below) that read: “Great, now we’re gonna sell weed instead!”
They said they had invited the mayor and Chancellor Joel Klein to join, but were not surprised when the pair didn’t show.
“I hear the mayor has a sweet tooth,” Jackson said.
Kaylina Holman, a senior at LaGuardia High School, held a sign warning that if students couldn't sell baked goods, they would turn to a different cash crop.
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November 13th, 2009 5:16 pm
That sign made my day. Thanks Kaylina
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November 14th, 2009 1:47 am
Jackson is such a pandering politician… why should schools sell unhealthy snacks to raise small amounts of mony for unecessary projects? Bake Sales should not be the foundation of our educational system, and yet as city council education chair, he’s more worried about bake sales than actually fixing the school’s problems that cost MILLIONS of dollars. Rubber room. ATR. Pension/Health giveaways that all can be fixed by the contract and the council, and he’s worried about $100 here and there for a PTA. Insane.
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November 14th, 2009 8:23 am
[...] High school students bring the bake sale ban protest to City Hall … [...]
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November 14th, 2009 10:15 am
The clubs, extracurricular activities, trips, sports tournaments, and charities that we raise money for by having bake sales are not, “unnecessary projects.” The money is not going to the PTAs, but going to the very things that make our schools so great. It’s not that anyone cares more about bake sales than “fixing the school’s problems,” it’s that they feel that this new regulation is a ridiculous attempt to conquer the all too complex issue of childhood obesity. In fact, I think that people shouldn’t be attacking Jackson, but the politicians who created this regulation in the first place. Maybe, the mayor and Chancellor Klein should be the ones focusing more on “fixing the school’s problems” instead of creating “half-baked” regulations that don’t even begin to scratch the surface of the true causes of childhood obesity.
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November 14th, 2009 4:09 pm
[...] High school students bring the bake sale ban protest to City Hall … [...]
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November 16th, 2009 4:57 pm
First of all, bake sales raise LARGE amounts of money. Bake sales are easily the most profitable and all-inclusive way for students to fundraise. The projects bake sales support are ANYTHING but unnecessary. Bake sales are how under-funded public schools raise the money to pay for team uniforms, school trips, art shows, science fairs, and multitudes of other excursions and projects that our learning experience WOULD NOT be the same without.
Banning bake sales does not solve the problem of obesity. Instead it hurts our public schools and the students who attend them, leaving us with less opportunities for extracurriculars and experiential education.
If the legislators who made this ban really cared about cutting back on obesity, they would make sure every public school had a proper gym. They would increase funding to sports teams and physical education programs. But they did none of these things, instead they banned bake sales, which does a lot more harm than good for public school students.
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