WHY NO PIES? Students at PS 193 in Queens can't hide their disappointment after their monthly "Pizza Day" festivities were canceled.
March 16, 2008 -- Joel Klein is a pizza-party pooper.
The schools chancellor's food police have put the kibosh on a 20-year-old "Pizza Day" tradition at a Queens elementary school, opening the door for a citywide ban, infuriating parents and upsetting kids.
"This borders on cruel," said Michael Teoduro, vice president of the PTA at PS 193 in Whitestone. "It's one thing that the kids really look forward to in school, and for no legitimate reason it's pulled out from under them."
Pizza Day took place once a month, when kids would eat 90 to 100 pies from local shop Pizza Chef instead of their regular lunch. Students needed a parental permission slip and paid $5 in advance for a slice and a container of fruit juice.
Proceeds from the pizza parties pumped $200 a month into the PTA's budget - meaning thousands of dollars a year for teacher grants, supplies and funding for the yearbook, graduation festivities and school dances. The extra cash is crucial in the face of citywide budget cuts.
"It was a major fund-raiser," said PTA co-President Alison Tortora. "We're grasping at straws now, trying to figure out how to replace it.
"In my daughter's class, kids were in a panic because they didn't get their pizza forms," Tortora added. "They were really upset. We just don't understand the whole thing."
According to the parents, the school was informed by the Department of Education's Office of School Food and Nutritional Services in January that Pizza Day was off the menu.
Parents said they were first told that it was a nutrition issue, then that the fund-raiser violated a chancellor's regulation that bars for-sale food from competing against and replacing school-provided lunches.
But the department told The Post a different story - that Pizza Day violated a regulation implemented in 2006 that mandates that children can only be involved in PTA fund-raisers twice a year.
"It's been incredibly confusing, and they haven't helped us figure out how to bring it back at all," Tortora said, adding that the PTA spent "countless hours" investigating the city's "5 million" chancellor's regulations in the hopes of reviving Pizza Day.
"They were not nice about it," Tortora said. "They were obnoxious and nasty and condescending, over a pizza party. They told us we were getting away with it for way too long. It's a joke."
The school's 500 students pay for their school lunch monthly, so "they're still paying for their lunch on Pizza Day," and the parties happen during non-class time, so their education is unaffected, Tortora noted.
"The school system isn't losing any money . . . The fund-raiser did not impact classroom time," she said.
"What am I missing?"
City Councilman Tony Avella is helping the parents fight the pizza ban.
"It's just plain stupid," he said. "This is just one more example of the bureaucratic red tape that comes out of the DOE. It's bizarre . . . It's amazing that they're focusing on an issue like this rather than cleaning up the waste and inefficiency and making sure the kids are getting a good education."
