When we joined the Wellness Committee at our schools, we were concerned parents with the simple agenda of wanting to improve the food in our school cafeteria. We never dreamed we’d become ardent food activists meeting with PTA Presidents, community boards, non-profit organizations, and other impassioned food mamas about how to change the food system in our public schools. But thanks to Chancellor Regulation A-812 banning the sale of home-cooked foods in our schools while allowing the sale of Doritos and Pop-Tarts instead, that is what we’ve quickly become.
Since our bake-in rally protesting the regulation in March, NYC Green Schools has been on the ground advocating for a repeal of the ban on the sale of home-cooked food at PTA president council meetings, community board meetings, and community education council meetings. We are happy to report that Community Boards 1, 2, 3 and 7 in Manhattan have all passed resolutions urging the Department of Education to repeal the ban. Their resolution will be presented at the Manhattan Borough Board Meeting this Thursday, May 18th, where the rest of the Manhattan community boards and Borough President Scott Stringer can learn about the resolution. Last week Community Board 6 in Brooklyn also passed a resolution asking the Department of Education to repeal the ban, and we’re confident their resolution will be brought to a borough board meeting as well.
What are the role of community boards in the political process? That was our question when Community Board 2 in Manhattan invited us to speak about Regulation A-812. While the Department of Education can willfully ignore resolutions passed by community boards, our elected officials cannot. Resolutions passed by community boards signal to our city council members and borough board presidents that there’s broad support for a measure, prompting our elected officials to then put pressure on our Mayor and Chancellor to honor, or at the very least acknowledge, the will of the people. In short, New York City community boards are a vital part of the democratic process ensuring that our city government is run by and for the people.
NYC Green Schools is continuing to broaden our coalition of parents, educators, community boards and community education councils, because we’ve learned that the only way we’re going to genuinely improve the quality of the food and, for that matter, education in our public schools is by coming together as parents, educators and citizens and demanding change. Before Chancellor Regulation A-812, this idea of building, dare we say it, a people’s movement would have seemed too abstract and daunting; but these last few months we’ve come to understand these words by the great historian and activist Howard Zinn: “And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”