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Students Fight Back Against Bake Sale Ban
by Meghan Brown

In efforts to combat childhood obesity, Mayor Bloomberg has banned schools from saving bake sales and the students are angry. Currently, 40% of children are overweight or obese and because of this the mayor has decided that banning the sale of baked goods is a necessary step to take. The A-812 Regulation of the Chancellor states that baked goods cannot be sold during the school day. The regulation also affects vending machines. If you’ve walked past the vending machines lately, then you probably noticed that Doritos and extra sugary pop tarts are no longer an option. 
                Students from Fiorello H. La Guardia High School, Beacon, and the Bronx High School of Science rallied together outside of City Hall on Friday, November 13th protesting the new regulation. They traded cupcakes for signatures. They currently have 6,000 signatures and are planning to to present the petition to city counsel members. The protest alone added about 1,000 signatures to their list. Anya Lehr, a senior from La Guardia and organizer of the protest, invited Gail Brewer, Robert Jackson, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein to the protest. Brewer and Jackson spoke out against the regulation along with the students. Bloomberg and Klein, however, didn’t return the students call. 
                With the recession schools have suffered tremendous budget cuts that have meant the loss of teachers and resources. Bake sales have been an easy way of raising funds. Sports teams and clubs that relied on bake sales to raise money for uniforms and equipment are now left trying to figure out other ways of supporting themselves. Bake sales were an easy fundraiser. The ingredients were cheap and the profit was great. 
  “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,” said Frances Wertimer, a senior at La Guardia and protester of the regulation, “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." 
                Seth Hoffman, a senior at Beacon High School, is organizing the petition. The protest was featured on the news, in newspapers such as the New York Times, and various blogs. Facebook is to thank for the success of this protest. 
                “To ensure the protest was a success,” Wertimer added, “we made flyers, made announcements to students in different classes during school, sent out a press release, made a facebook event... did a lot of publicity through facebook actually.” 
                Students from schools all over the city are talking about having a second protest. For more information, join the facebook group “Petition the A-812 Regulation of The Chancellor (ban of school bake sales).”