The Law Nobody Knows About

Two years ago, California passed a law banning six synthetic food dyes from schools, unanimously. Every person in the Senate voted that it belongs nowhere in school due to its effects seen on children’s brains. But nobody has to act on it for ANOTHER two years. And almost no parent in California has heard of it, or knows to act before it is mandatory in schools. Leaving children to keep eating them for four years after it was found to be harmful enough to ban.

The four year gap between a decision and an enforcement date is filled with silence.

No newsletter. No announcement. No PTA email. Just crickets, as parents continue to bring Red 40 frosted donuts to classroom birthday parties and fundraising events with the best intentions and zero information.

A plate full of love, temporary mouth pleasure, and long term damage.

I've been trying to change that at my sons' school. And what I've learned in the process says as much about how communities receive information as it does about food dye.

Why the PTA Doesn’t Want to Say It First

The PTA is not the enemy. I want to be clear about that. The parents organizing events, planning fundraisers, sending newsletters — they're doing it out of love for their school community. But institutions, even small volunteer-run ones, move by consensus and protect themselves from liability. That means they wait for something to be unambiguous before they say it out loud.

A law that isn't yet enforced feels ambiguous to an institution even when it isn't. The California Senate voted unanimously. There is nothing ambiguous about six dyes being banned from schools. But until 2028, no institutional body feels the pressure to act, and therefore no institutional body feels comfortable speaking.

That's not cynicism. That's just how organizations work. They need the ground to be fully settled before they plant a flag on it.

Which means someone else has to go first.

Who Goes First

I have never been that person. I want to be honest about that because I think it matters.

I was the nerdy, unpopular kid who found the same seat and stayed in it. I am not naturally someone who walks into a room full of confident, connected women and commands attention. I've sat in PTA meetings and watched ideas evaporate in the space between raising my hand and finding a moment to speak. I know what it feels like to have the right information at the wrong time in the wrong room.

And yet here I am. Not because I became a different person but because the information became impossible to stay quiet about.

My sons come home from school events with ingredients California has already decided don't belong there. Almost daily. Not because anyone is careless — because nobody told the parent who brought the donuts. Nobody told the volunteer who organized the treat bags. Nobody told the PTA event coordinator who has been doing this for years. They're all good people making uninformed choices, and the only reason I know the difference is because I happened to research it.

That feels like something worth saying out loud.

The Peanut Butter Standard

We don't allow peanut butter in school lunches. That rule is enforced, understood, and accepted by every parent without argument. Nobody calls it overreach. Nobody says it's one family's preference. We removed the risk for everyone because the harm to some children was taken seriously as a community responsibility.

California has now made the same call about six food dyes. Unanimously. The harm to children was considered serious enough that not a single senator disagreed.

The difference is that peanuts have had decades of advocacy, awareness, and cultural momentum behind them. Food dyes are two years into a four year silence. And in that silence, every classroom birthday, every fundraiser donut, every brightly colored treat bag is operating as if the vote never happened.

I'm not asking for enforcement ahead of schedule. I'm asking for information to reach the parents who would make different choices if they simply knew. Most parents don't want to hand something to another person's child that the state has already decided doesn't belong there. They just haven't been told yet.

Stating the Law Is Not Medical Advice

This is the part that surprised me most. When I tried to bring this information to my school community, the hesitation I encountered was around liability. The concern that sharing health information could put the PTA in a difficult position.

But sharing a law is not medical advice. It requires no expertise, no endorsement, no institutional approval. When a diabetes newsletter comes home from school it carries no liability. When a school posts information about sleep and screen time it carries no liability. Stating that California unanimously banned six dyes from schools two years ago is the same category of information. It is simply true.

The liability concern is a symptom of the same problem — institutions wait for certainty before speaking, and in the meantime the information sits with the people who happened to go looking for it. People like me. People who probably seem, to a room full of PTA parents, a little intense. A little outside the mainstream. A little hard to place.

The Gap Is the Point

What I've come to understand is that the gap between a law passing and parents hearing about it doesn't fill itself. Schools will comply in 2028 — quietly, practically, probably without announcement. A yogurt brand will change. A cake mix will switch. And the parent volunteer ecosystem — the fundraisers, the class parties, the treat bags — will keep running on whatever they've always run on, because nobody ever said anything.

That gap is where I live right now. And I think a lot of parents who care about this live there too — quietly, a little frustrated, not sure how to be heard in rooms that weren't really designed to hear them.

I don't have a perfect answer for how to close it. I'm still figuring out the right meeting, the right format, the right moment. What I know is that stating a fact is not radical. Sharing a law is not an attack. And two years in a child's life is immense.

Someone has to say it first. It might as well be the person who already knows.