OUR SCHOOLS

So as many of you know, I am a full-time working mom. I have two little girls ages 5 and 2 and for most of my mom-years I have been dealing with daycare and not the public school system. When my 5 year old entered kindergarten for the first time this fall, I was excited. I was thrilled to have her in an educational environment where her brain would be challenged more so than a daycare ever could. I remember kindergarten. I loved it. I remember Mrs. Horvat, my teacher, she rocked. I soaked up everything that I was taught.

So it is natural for me to have the same expectations for my daughter even though I know we are two separate people. Starting kindergarten for my daughter was a very stressful time. She is a timid and anxiety ridden child, unsure about anything “new” in her life. Routine is her best friend, as it is for most kids.

When she entered school, met her teacher and began her first year, she did well. She did way better than Vans and I had expected. She was learning, making friends and becoming more independent. I had assumed our challenge would be her making friends, speaking up when she wanted or needed something and just overall acclimating to being with 25 other new kids she has never met. Never in my wildest dreams would I envision the struggles I’d face with food.

As I have said before, my daughter is a picky eater who loves sugar. I struggle at home to get her to make the right choices when it comes to consuming healthier food. Apparently I was naive to think that my daughter’s school would be on my side by encouraging these healthy choices.

You may remember this battle that I had with the PTA President back in October. Well trouble strikes again, this time in form of asking parents to submit General Mill’s Box Tops.

A few weeks ago, my daughter came home on a Friday with her homework folder and in the folder was a flyer from the school reminding parents to collect and submit Box Tops. I read the flyer, was immediately annoyed and tweeted this photo:

IMG_3964

I understand the point of box tops (from the school’s side): each Box Top collected is equal to 10 cents, you bring in 10 box tops and you’ll have a dollar, a dollar from each kid … you get the point. Money! It always comes back to money. While I admit you can collect Box Tops on items like Ziploc baggies (although we try and use reusable in our house), most of the Box Tops come from General Mills sugar laden chemical filled cereals.

While it may appear that the school is “winning” by earning money, the real winner is General Mills. Not only do they get parents to buy their products thinking that they are going to be supporting their child’s school, the company essentially develops life long customers because the sugar in their product is addicting.

Create groups or teams where together they decide on the best treatment they can adopt to remedy this problem. free samples of levitra We would advise you to follow the dosage pattern that is to have the 100mg pill of discount cialis 20mg an hour before you make love. Penis pumping involves increasing the holding capacity of corpus cavernosa to the cialis generic australia penis. Folate tadalafil 20mg cipla is essential for blood circulation, including the reproductive system.
I could go on and on about the Box Tops. My problem however was rewarding kids who clearly ate sugar to “win” with more sugar! Why does the prize have to be a donut party? Why couldn’t they provide the winning classes with jump ropes? You can find a jump rope for a dollar at most dollar-stores … why not promote exercise instead of more sugar?

In my obvious displeasure I tweeted the above photo to a lot of the people I look up to nutritionally on Twitter. One of whom is Registered Dietician Andy Bellatti. Andy not only retweeted my photo, but he also commented on it. He also contacted me privately asking if he could use my photo (a slightly altered one) as well as my name and issue with the school, in his next article. He has been wanting to write an article about Box Tops for some time for the website www.civileats.com.

I said sure, no problem. I didn’t want the school mentioned by name but he could use my name, my photo and my town (we have many elementary schools here). I was prepared for Civil Eats, I was not prepared for The Huffington Post. Last week sometime I was surfing twitter (I surf more than I tweet) and I came across a post by Andy linking to his article in the Huffington Post – you can see that article here. You can see it on Civil Eats here.

Wow. I know I only have a small mention in a sentence or two but since that initial tweet my following on Twitter has significantly increased. The way in which he wrote his article was also great. He did his research. He looked at the numbers. He got other well known experts to comment.

I just wanted to raise awareness in my daughter’s school. Whether anything will change because of this article, is unsure but it will open some eyes. It has definitely started a fire within me to try and create some change in my daughter’s school. I am battling her eating habits at home, I don’t need the school fighting against my efforts when they should be on my side. They should be on the side of the children and their health, not General Mills.

Happy Trails!

~Trailmomma

 

Share This:

DEAR PTA PRESIDENT

The Parent Teacher Association or as it is more commonly known, the PTA is a formal organization composed of parents, teachers and staff and is  intended to facilitate parental participation in the school. With the Peanut now in kindergarten, Vans and I are experiencing public school and this organization for the first time.  Actually there is even a NATIONAL PTA  and their mission as quoted on their website is “The overall purpose of PTA is to make every child potential a reality  by engaging and empowering families and communities to advocate for all  children.” Sounds pretty awesome right? I mean, what can be better than “engaging and empowering families” and being an “advocate for all children.” Impressive no?

Well hold onto your girl scout cookies when you hear the story I am about to tell you about my recent run-in with our local PTA. It had me fuming enough to write this post and I hope it inspires you to investigate your own PTA organizations.

The background: Peanut attends public school but this particular public school resides in a very affluent area in Northern California. Mind you, not ALL of the families that attend this school are well-off but I would venture to guess, that the majority of them are living comfortably. Now there is nothing wrong with that. I have no problems with it. Vans and I work very hard and some might say we are pretty well off as well and I wouldn’t disagree but we also are in the minority when it compares against other families in our daughter’s school. What does this mean? Why does income even matter in this story? Sadly, money is a driving force for a lot of people. To many, if it doesn’t make money than it isn’t worth the time or in this case, our children’s health. Stay with me here, it gets better.

So this school hosted a Harvest Festival. The Peanut was super excited to attend as her class was to perform a song on stage for the parents. So on a beautiful Saturday morning the entire Trailmomma family loaded into the car and attended the Harvest Festival. While walking around I noticed a few little boys (probably 7 or 8 years old) walking around with half empty two liter bottles of soda. I sort of thought that odd and I secretly was hoping that they were just carrying the soda some where and not actually consuming it.

It was then that I noticed one of the game booths. It was “ring toss” where you toss a little ring onto what appeared to be a bunch of soda bottles. No big deal right? Well if the kids connected they received a two liter bottle of soda…AS A PRIZE!! So yes, those little boys had been consuming what appeared to be a lot of soda directly from the bottle. I looked around and there were lots of kids (and parents) carrying soda bottles! I was saddened by this and it prompted me to write a letter to the president of the PTA (since this Harvest Festival was organized by the PTA). I was pretty polite in my letter. Here, see for yourself:

Hi there, thank you for the Harvest Festival. My daughter is in  kindergarten and this was our first ever Harvest Festival. She had a  great time so thank you.

There is one thing I’d like to bring  up however that concerned me involving the “ring toss” game. While the  game and the idea is fine, I have to really disagree with the use of  soda. Before I even saw the game itself, I saw 7, 8 and 9 year olds each  walking around with a half empty two liter bottle of soda. At first I  thought they were carrying them to the concession stands or food  area but then I realized that was their “prize” in the ring toss.  Really?

I won’t go into the unhealthy aspects of soda or what it does to a child’s tooth enamel as I am sure you must be aware. Please  reconsider this game next year. It is sending a terrible message to our  children or at the very least do not let the soda be awarded as a prize  although I caution against even supporting the soda industry by  purchasing two liter bottles to begin with.

I know, “to each  their own” and I didn’t let my child participate in that specific game  as she found plenty of others to play but if we can help our children  avoid the amount of sugar contained in soda, we’d all be better off.
Thank you again for your time and for all that you did. I will continue to  support the PTA and perhaps next year will participate in the Harvest  Festival planning.

Sincerely, Trailmomma

Be honest, is there anything truly insulting or mean about that letter? Okay so maybe the “Really?” was a little unnecessary but I wanted to make a point. A few days had gone by and finally I received a response from the president of the PTA. Her email alone has started an avalanche within my head of emotions and anger that I literally had to stop and count to ten after I read her letter. Here is what she wrote:

Greetings Trailmomma,

Thank you for your message and for providing feedback.  Truthfully, the health risks of soda is not debatable, I’m a pharmacist and my  husband is a physician.  But I’d like to provide some background information, and then I have a request.

It is a non-surgical process introduced by a prominent and well-known Ajanta Pharma, which is known buy levitra from canada for its other products like Kamagra jellies for sexual performance in bed have become so popular today. Once Kamagra is absorbed in the blood, inhibits platelet stickiness and slows generic super cialis blood coagulation. Also, keep in mind that there are no such ads for the medicine that the viagra tablets in india has. The causes of ED can sometimes not be http://www.learningworksca.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/High-School-Transition.pdf get viagra no prescription cured at all especially in older men.

The soda ring toss game brought in slightly over $1,500 in net revenue at the 2013 Harvest Festival. There was no cost to run the game because the soda was 100% donated by parents and grocery stores (about  70%, 30% respectively). The PTA will use the $1,500 in revenue to pay for an electronic reading program (“RazKids”)  that your Kindergarten student will use in Kindergarten and 1st Grade.
Therefore, eliminating the game is not an option. The benefits  clearly outweigh the risks.  But replacing the game with an equally  high-earning game could be considered.  Which is where my request comes  in. Please consider championing a replacement game.  This could be accomplished by researching PTA/PTO  blogs/articles/websites and consulting outside friends/family to  investigate what school carnival games are wildly popular for similar  demographics and age.  The PTA would consider your proposal for a  replacement game, and if approved, would be run head-to-head against the soda ring  toss at the next Harvest.  This could solve the issue without  sacrificing needed funds.
Best Regards PTA President

So I plan on responding to her email (again) and to explain my point (again). My intention is to respond with respect and maturity however, I am not entirely sure how much I’ll be able to muster without really bringing to light all the things WRONG with her response. Which leads me to this blog post. Here, I am allowed to write what I want. Here, I am allowed to write the truth.

Dear PTA President:

First and foremost the disclosure of you and your husband’s professions make your email one hundred times more sad although not entirely surprising. I have no doubts that you are smart educated people but both of your professions have no background in nutrition. Both of your professions are geared towards prescribing pills, basically band-aids to mask many problems that can be purely avoided or healed by a better intake of nutrition and the basic understanding of how what you consume nutritionally will determine your medical course in life.

With that aside, it seems that you place the health of your children and the health of all children at the school at about $1500. Is that about right? You said “the benefits out weigh the risks” in your letter. So $1500 is better than a child who will develop diabetes? Or perhaps a child with ADHD? $1500 is way more important than childhood obesity which is running rampant in our nation. $1500 is more important than an elementary school student having massive tooth decay and a mouth full of cavities? $1500 is clearly more important than a child who develops cardiovascular disease from consuming soda filled with caffeine and sugar. You would rather sacrifice the health of our children for money?

You said your husband was a physician right? So he must have read the study published in The Journal of Pediatrics that found children who consume large amounts of soda per day experience more aggression, withdrawal and attention problems. It sounds however that you are willing to sacrifice those issues for $1500.

In your email you say that you want me to “champion” a replacement game that is as “equally high earning” and then later state that my game would go head to head with “ring toss” at the next Harvest. Clever Mrs. President. That means next year you’ll have the opportunity to bring in even more money.  Perhaps a tactic to not only get the PTA some cash but also make you feel less guilty for handing out poison to our kids? Something tells me that “ring toss” would not be resigned from the list of games even if another game “out-did” it.

I can accept your challenge to find a new game however I just simply want to know, why do the 2 liter bottles have to be filled with soda!? Why can’t they be 2 liter bottles filled with water? Why can’t we call upon our families to RECYCLE (another noble thought) any 2 liter plastic bottle they come across and fill them with WATER!? Imagine that? Same effect without the carcinogenic poison being introduced to our children.

Clearly money is at the heart of the matter here. Not the health and well-being of our kids. If that is the case, I will scour the streets and parks to recycle as many bottles and cans as I need to raise $1500 so that at the next Harvest Festival, the children (and parents) at this school won’t have to pay money to consume carbonated crap as a prize.

Sincerely, Trailmomma

Whew, that felt good. Tell, me do you really want to see these two beautiful faces (or your own kids) consuming soda? I don’t.

harvest festival

 

Share This: