You Are What You Eat

Read This:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/nyregion/at-new-yorks-private-schools-rutabaga-fries-not-tater-tots.html?_r=1&ref=style

There are many varieties of education reform, some curricular others culinary. The Times is exhaustive in its coverage.

I’m not really one to judge: I’m a proud vegetarian and prouder food snob. I’m from Portland, Oregon, where food snobbery is as common as putting a bird on it. As common as dudes who never leave the city limits rocking head-to-toe Pata-Gucci. The similarities run deep between my hometown and current city. I’m quite comfortable here in Portland East (er, Brooklyn). Like Pollan, Safran-Foer and half this borough, I think food is important.

But I think other things are important, too. Like margaritas, sunshine and educational equality.

Parents who shell out $35,000 a year for private school tuition should expect healthy food for their kidlets. But do they need gourmet, Batalli-approved cuisine to fuel up before AP History? Is fennel and gorgonzola penne tossed with fresh virgin olive oil a vital part of college-readiness?

Maybe, maybe not—actually, I don’t really care. What I do care about is the other end of the spectrum. While private schoolers uptown are chowing down on roasted beet salad with goat cheese made in the school creamery, what’s nourishing their public school counterparts here in Brooklyn or up there in Harlem? School lunch isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things, but there are comparisons to be drawn here.

If paying 30 grand gets your kids Babbo in the school cafeteria, what does paying zilch get you? Informal research suggests a healthy diet of half-frozen mozzarella sticks, expired chocolate milk and gray ravioli. Eat your heart out, Michael Pollan. Doesn’t seem quite fair, but who can argue with the difference thousands and thousands of dollars makes in the education game of LIFE?

If you pay top dollar for your kids to have a stellar education, you should expect top-notch eats. By that same token, you should expect top-notch teachers, curriculum, resources, field trips and technology. But what about your public school counterparts? Because their parents pay nothing, does it follow that they get crappy teachers, half-formed curriculum, shoddy tech and dated text books? You get what you pay for, and if you’re paying zero, I guess you get about that much.

Fair, Right?

Wrong. Private schools can do whatever they like (why not make the most of the tuition dollars flowing in?), but there’s something broken about a system in which the disparity between public and private schools is that extreme and ever-widening. Parents who send their kids to public school have a right to know that their kids are safe, healthy and getting schooled real good. Same as the private school parents.

I’ll give a five-star Yelp review to the Horace Mann cafeteria (if I could ever get a res), but I’d also like to know that the rest of the kids across the city are well-fed at lunchtime. Just like I’d like to know that the majority of kids across the city are learning how to read and crunch numbers with appropriate personnel and resources, no matter what their parents pay.

So bring on the rutabaga fries!