How New York’s schoolchildren got their French toast back

Mayor Eric Adams has made many unpopular cuts, but it was a mistake to mess with the French toast.

The breakfast sticks with a hint of syrup were one of the popular menu items at New York City public schools that suddenly disappeared earlier this year, along with chicken dumplings and bean burritos.

But no one thought to ask the children, who quickly made their feelings known. On Wednesday, school officials reversed course, promising to return the items quickly and acknowledging that they were had heard “loud and clear from the children.”

The turnaround was a major victory for students over meddling adults. It remains to be seen whether they will then exercise their political power by lobbying to retrieve other missing items, such as cookies and chicken drumsticks.

On Thursday, outside Joseph Pulitzer High School in Jackson Heights, Queens, a group of sixth-graders jumped up and down and cheered when they heard some menu items would be returning.

“Let’s go,” said Dariel Genao, 12. “We’re about to have the best lunch.”

The menu changes were disappointing, says Nameer Ahmed, 12.

“There has been a lot of sadness,” he said. “I think some people even cried.”

Jeremy Roman, 12, shook his head as he held up a photo of the sloppy beef patty he ate for lunch that day. “It’s dirty,” he said.

Amy Tocachi, 13, said it was important to have a good lunch because they eat it at 10:21 a.m.

“We have it really early, and then we don’t have anything else to eat all day,” she said.

The school lunch cuts were first reported by Chalkbeat, an education news siteand almost immediately sparked outrage among students, parents and some elected officials. Then the mayor’s budget director, Jacques Jiha, made one on Monday strange argument to the city council: He said the city decided to remove the items because students were enjoying them too much.

Mr Jiha said the city had made major investments in school canteens and had, in a sense, become a victim of its own success.

“So what you end up with is you now have a lot of kids hanging around in the cafeterias eating more and more and more,” he said.

It was a notable departure from cafeteria food’s long-standing bad reputation. John Liu, a senator from Queens who chairs the education committee, was incredulous.

“Is it a bad thing that children hang out and eat in the cafeteria more?” He posted on social media. “School lunch doesn’t have to be dirty, and this response is not enough.”

The debate over school lunch menus comes as Mr. Adams pushes in Albany to expand the mayor’s control over the schools. Mr. Adams, a Democrat in his third year as president, has feuded with state lawmakers over school funding and class sizes. He has repeatedly cut the budgets of municipal agencies, including the Ministry of Education, blaming the rising costs of caring for tens of thousands of homeless migrants arriving in the city.

The reversal, that was first reported by NY1was an effort to listen to students, said Jenna Lyle, spokeswoman for the education department.

“Over the past few weeks we have heard directly from our youth and we are thrilled that, working with administration, we have been able to restore a range of menu items, including French toast, bean and cheese burritos and chicken dumplings, that our children know and love keep,” she said.

Ms Lyle said some items were not returned, including bagel sticks, guacamole and cookies. “We do have full bagels available!” she added.

The Ministry of Education had done this last spring advertised the French toast on social media, saying “this lower sodium, lower sugar whole grain breakfast item” was taste tested and approved by students.

Mr Adams said at one event last year honoring foodservice workers that he wanted his legacy to be about health, noting that his mother was a hospitality worker. Kate Mackenzie, executive director of the mayor’s food policy, told the crowd at the time that her daughter had especially praised the dumplings.

“My daughter came to me and said, ‘Mom, please don’t ever make this again because there are no better dumplings than the dumplings I get at school,’” she said.

Troy Closson reporting contributed.