Well finally some common sense. We’ve seen school districts and even state legislatures determine that food fundraisers were a bad thing and they could no longer be held. That meant the end to cookie dough fundraising and candy fundraising which for years had been some of the most common school fundraising ideas.

Now we read where school districts might be rethinking that position. Consider a recent article in the Taunton Daily Gazette. It talks about schools in the town of Norton:

“When the school committee made the decision in June to ban bake sales and candy bar fundraisers during school hours it was under the impression new state standards in nutrition and physical fitness forced it to do so. In light of new information being released from the state that might not be the case. “We were under the understanding that (eliminating) fundraising counted as part of the state standards but now we know that is excluded,” school committee Chairman Deniz Savas said.”

Apparently there was a change of heart.

“We value that these fundraisers are for good causes,” Martes said. Committee members Beth McManus and Phillip Lynch both voted against banning of bake sales in June.

It appears like there has been some back pedaling possibly because the decision makers did not completely think through the implications of their decision. Unfortunately that happens quite often. Most of the time it’s innocent. But in this case decisions were far removed from the people on the ground that do their best to raise money for the schools and students who most need it.

“I think in doing so we are cutting off the PTO (parent teacher organization) at the knees,” McManus said. “They raise so much money to supplement our budget.” Henri A Yelle Elementary School principal Lisa Farrell said $10,000 was raised in sales last year during its candy bar fundraiser.

We are a huge believer in product fundraisers. We’ve been associated with companies that have literally helped more than 100,000 groups raise money over the past 10 years and we know how hard they work to fill in the loose ends that school budgets ignore. So we are so happy to see food fundraisers revisited.