When I started advocating for sugar restraint, I thought many things would happen quickly. However, this was definitely not the case.
There is always some urgency around issues parents advocate for. Their children are always top of mind, and if harm or deficiency is perceived, that urgency can reach extreme heights. When our children are involved, things cannot happen fast enough.
So naively I assumed that if I asked, that someone would rationally agree with my reasoning (how could they not? haha!), and then work to put the policy into action. Little did I know at that point! In fact, I encountered resistance across the board to moving fast.
What are the barriers to moving fast? There are many:
- Schools are not your high speed, high powered organization that you read about in business books.
- Since you are not working in the organization, you work with influence only and not authority. None of the school personnel, or parent volunteers if you’re trying to convince the PTA, have any need to listen to what you have to say nor take action.
- Your priority is likely not their priority. They most likely have their own priorities already and now you show up with another one.
- There really is only 6 months where you can get anything done. This period is the fall, when school starts (for PAUSD it is around August 15) and this period extends to about January-Februrary. After that, trying to start something new is nearly impossible because all minds are looking towards closing out the year. Parents stop thinking about the school district and think about summer break. If you’re trying to get on the agenda for student government meetings, they are probably already set and you won’t be able to appear. Even PTA meetings might all be spoken for. By the way, our PTA can only pass resolutions by voting on a resolution twice. The first time is with our PTA Executive Board. The second vote is with the general association membership. So we are talking about 2 months to get something endorsed by the PTA, sometimes longer if they ask you to collect more information and come back later (our PTA meetings typically happen once a month for executive board and once a month for general association; you would need to pass the executive board first before going to generation association vote). If you haven’t gotten something going by Jan-Feb, you’re really stuck thinking about how you’re going to restart efforts next August.
- Turnover in personnel or when new leadership appears at the PTA can really slow down efforts if not halt them in their tracks. I have long argued for more continuity across elected offices both at the PTA and district (ie. school board members). Right now you can only serve two terms and then you can’t come back unless you skip a year. This really hampers the ability to get things done, especially if they take longer than one year.
- Communication channels to rally support need to be built over and over again. We do have electronic email lists, but you cannot just email anything out on them. That kind of makes sense; if any advocacy group (like me) were to be able to email out, everyone would get spammed like crazy. So rallying support needs to be done the old fashioned way, potentially with petitions and going door to door. This all takes a lot of time.
Facing all of these barriers – well, actually running more like face first into them! – I resigned myself to making this a multiple year project, and even some parts spanning a decade.
I had to let go of the fact that my children might need to face poor nutritional choices and so I sought to bolster their education and resistance to all the temptations of our Standard American Diet and what could be available at the school’s cafeteria, its snack bars at the secondary school level, or what other kids might tempt them with.
I instead set my goals far in the future and now am marching methodically towards these greater goals, knowing that my children might actually graduate before they could enjoy the results of our efforts.