ATLANTA – Outrage is growing against federal restrictions on school bake sales and fundraisers.
“We don’t have enough teachers in our classrooms and now we are expected to hire some type of food police to monitor whether we are having bake sales or not. That is just asinine,” John Barge, Georgia state school superintendent tells WSB-TV.
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Barge and the state Board of Education are attempting to get an exemption from the snack rules, which would allow only 30 sales per year per school.
Tennessee recently received such a restriction and even still, they were mad.
State Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman said it was “quite remarkable” there would even be a cap at all.
Other states have not plead for leniency from their federal overlords, so even 30 would be against the law.
“We need this money for competition, for outfits, for buses, without those sales we can’t go,” Harmony Hart tells the news station. She adds her dance team in Rockdale County is reliant on bake sales.
“What an overreach this is for Washington to tell us what our school can and cannot sell to raise money in our schools,” Barge says, according to WSB.
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“We think we should teach children how to make smart decisions and not have the government make the smart decisions for them,” Marietta School Board member Jason Waters told 11Alive News.
“It’s all organizations, it’s the band, it’s the booster club, it’s dance, these organizations will be negatively impacted,” Waters said.
School leaders in other states are admitting the new regulations are actually already backfiring.
“The effect has been not what was intended,” says Jack Carter of Richland District 2 near Columbia, South Carolina. “The effect has been kids don’t eat in the cafeteria anymore, and that’s nationwide,” he tells WLTX.
Carter implied there will be a new type of segregation in schools – those that have good lunches, and those that have Michelle Obama’s.
“What’s going to happen now is it’s going to be back to the way it was, say, 7 or 8 years ago; the only kids eating in the cafeteria are going to be the free and reduced-(price lunch) kids, because they just don’t have options,” he says, according to WLTX.
Georgia’s state school board is planning to vote on the “30 sale exemption” proposal on August 21st.
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