For Principal Gary Anger, one of the best reasons to keep birthday treats out of the classroom popped up one day last year when a second-grader landed in his office for making trouble at Red Pine Elementary in Eagan.
Turned out it was the boy's birthday, and he didn't have cookies or a cake to share. "The big reason he was acting up was because he didn't have anything to give his classmates," said Anger, whose school began nixing birthday snacks this year.
The tradition of classroom birthdays with sheet cake or pizza has survived for many families even as schools nationwide have cut back on sugary treats in lunchrooms, snack carts and class fundraisers. But that's changing in some Minnesota schools, which now tell parents to keep the confections at home -- not only for health reasons, but also to cut down on time spent on class parties and to spare the feelings of students whose families can't afford elaborate treats for the whole class.
Some parents, though, find the idea of a food-free birthday distasteful.
"I kind of struggle with that because, come on, a birthday is a celebration," said Chanel Churcher, who said her fifth-grade son told her last year that treats were discouraged in his class at Galtier Magnet Elementary in St. Paul. Churcher said she called his teacher and got permission to bring them anyway. "I'm just a cupcake mom," she said.
But some principals are not cupcake administrators. For Tom Idstrom, of Rosemount Elementary, the final straw came the afternoon when he found himself staring at a row of six chocolate cupcakes that students had lined up at the end of his desk.
"The days of homemade chocolate chip cookies are over, and the types of things that students were bringing in were enormous muffins or just large birthday treats," said Idstrom, who pointed out that, for safety reasons, many schools have long told parents to send in store-bought treats instead of homemade goods. "We felt that that wasn't necessarily what we wanted within our school on a daily basis. With 620 kids, we have three or four birthdays a day."
Three years ago, Rosemount Elementary banned classroom birthday foods. Others in the metro area are moving in the same direction. The Edina district, for example, is urging schools to stop allowing birthday treats, with a goal of switching to healthy snacks by next year and ultimately moving away from food entirely, said Jolene Goldade, the district's communications manager. As of this year, all Minnetonka elementary schools are birthday- cake-free zones.
