Students from New York City public schools gathered in front of City Hall on Friday, November 13, to protest the Chancellor’s Regulation A-812, which states that students are prohibited from selling items not approved by the Department of Education (DOE) from the time school starts until six p.m.

The protest’s purpose was to gain support and publicity for the petition against the bake sale ban. The protest also included a bake sale, for which students brought in baked goods and sold them, asking for signatures for the petition instead of money. According to senior Anya Lehr of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, who organized this event, about 1,000 signatures were added during the protest alone. The petition now has around 6,000 total signatures and Stuyvesant has the most student signatures with 1,000.

Lehr organized the protest mainly through a Facebook event page, called “BAKE SALE BAN PROTEST.” Regarding her decision to organize this event, she said, “I’m in Model UN, a lot of my friends are on sports teams, and I’m also the president of a club that relies a lot on bake sales. Taking bake sales away means taking clubs away.”

“Students do not want to pay for their [school] trips to Costa Rica, Mozambique, Greece and Rome or Madrid out of their own pockets. Bake sales used to be a way for these classes to be immersed in their studies, with less damage on their families’ pockets,” said senior Seth Hoffman of the Beacon School, who is one of the creators of the bake sale ban petition. “[Bake sales] are important to not only funding for extracurricular activities, but also to the culture of schools.”

About 100 people showed up at the protest. They were mostly students, but there were also several parents. “We were expecting a lot more people, but it was a Friday and kind of rainy,” Lehr said. However, senior Annie Yang, who was in charge of collecting signatures for the petition at Stuyvesant High School, said, “More people showed up than I expected.”

The protesters chanted and held signs, which said things such as: “Bloomberg: $100 million re-election campaign? We wouldn’t need bake sales with money like that!” and “We’re not obese—we’re starved for funding.”

Two city council members, Gale Brewer and Robert Jackson, and a representative sent by the DOE also attended the protest.

The two councilmen both made speeches at the protest. “Bake sales aren’t about junk food. They are about school activities,” Jackson said. Referring to the Chancellor’s reason that bake sales needed to be banned to help prevent obesity in New York City schools, he said. “This bake sale [ban] is like a Band-Aid when you need major surgery,”
“They were totally in support of us. They agree with us that we should have our bake sales back,” Lehr said. “It was especially important that the city council people came. They’re the ones who can change this and make a new law and also tell their fellow council members about this.”

The protest also gained attention from the media. “There was a lot of press coverage,” Lehr said. “It was on the Channel 11 news [Friday] night, and hopefully it will be in some newspapers.”

Yang was one of the people interviewed by the Channel 11 WPIX-TV news crew. “They asked what was going on and why we were doing this, and we said that we need money for our clubs,” she said.

“I think it was really important that the press was there so that more people than just students are aware,” Lehr said.
In regards to the protest’s success, Yang said, “I thought it was pretty successful. We got a lot more signatures and lots of support.”

“I hope that [the protest] worked, and I’m going to keep trying to make it work. People should be proactive and get things done instead of just complaining about it,” Lehr said.

“The next step is to get signatures from even more people and get our voices heard by the Department of Education in order to make compromises with them and change this regulation,” Hoffman said.