At the PTA, Clashes Over Cupcakes and Culture

Kyle Spencer

The Cupcake Wars came to Public School 295 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in October. The Parent-Teacher Association's decision to raise the price of a cupcake at its monthly bake sale -- to $1, from 50 cents -- was supposed to be a simple way to raise extra money in the face of city budget cuts. Instead, in a neighborhood whose median household income leaped to $60,184 in 2010 from $34,878 a decade before, the change generated unexpected ire, pitting cash-short parents against volunteer bakers, and dividing a flummoxed PTA executive board, where wealthier newcomers to the school serve alongside poorer immigrants who have called the area home for years.

"A lot of people felt like they really needed to be heard on this," recalled Dan Janzen, a mild-mannered freelance copywriter with children in first and third grades who leads the school's development committee and devised the price increase. One mother expressed dismay at being blindsided, while others said they were worried about those at the school without a dollar to spare. Ultimately, the PTA meeting at which the issue came to a head was adjourned without a resolution.

Such fracases are increasingly common at schools like P.S. 295, where changing demographics can cause culture clashes. PTA leaders are often caught between trying to get as much as possible from parents of means without alienating lower-income families. Sometimes, the battles are over who should lead the PTA itself: many of the gentrifiers bring professional skills and different ideas of how to get things done, while those who improved the school enough to attract them become guardians of its traditions.

So along with cross-cultural exchanges, international festivals and smorgasbords, school diversity can mean raw feelings about race and class bubbling to the surface. "It's never just about the cupcake," said Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education at Teachers College, who has written extensively about this topic. "The cupcake is the spark."

Posted by Jeff Henriques at March 20, 2012 9:07 PM
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