New food laws at schools hurt students' ability to raise funds

As a student at Santa Susana High School and as a volunteer at the student store, I see that the "Food Safety Law" Gov. Schwarzenegger signed about a year back seems to hinder more than it helps.

Snack sales are one of the few ways our schools can get money without requesting more money from the district. Our school's cafeteria and student store bring in hundreds and sometimes even thousands a day. Limiting what they can sell also limits the income they bring in.

Reasons are that students would rather spend twice as much money to eat elsewhere than eat the low-calorie (low-taste) foods sold in our student store and cafeteria.

Not only that, but as a club president and officer, I also see the decline of money that Club Rush will bring in.

Club Rush is an event at lunch where clubs sell items to gain money for funds they might not get elsewhere. The biggest sellers are food items like In-N-Out and Del Taco, which are banned because they contain more than 175 calories (less than a bottle of chocolate milk).

Of course this decline of selling food for school funds wouldn't be so bad if our state and local schools were given the funding that they have requested from our governor since the start of his term, but it seems that he would rather dump money into enforcing food laws than into the furtherment of our educational system.

So, with another limit on our school's funding, where does our governor expect our schools to gain the lost funding? Saamon Legoski Simi Valley