This is not a figment of your imagination. The New York Times informs us of a school principal in Philadelphia who has gone as far to enlist parents to stand outside private businesses near the school to stop children from buying food.

Tatyana Gray bolted from her house and headed toward her elementary school. But when she reached the corner store where she usually gets her morning snack of chips or a sweet drink, she encountered a protective phalanx of parents with bright-colored safety vests and walkie-talkies.

Inside the school, principal Amelia Brown unilaterally decided that students could no longer have the choice of beverage to accompany their meal. You can drink water whether you like it or not.

Like schools throughout the nation, Kelley has expelled soda and sweet snacks. Instead of high-calorie fruit juices, the school nurse, Wendy Fine, said, “I push water.”

This measure wasn’t going far enough for Ms. Brown. Next, she took to intimidating local business owners.

To match the efforts inside the school, one of Ms. Brown’s first acts as principal last August was to ask owners of nearby corner stores to stop selling to students in the morning.

But, this effort didn’t satisfy the principal. So she pursued a more extreme measure.

Frustrated that her pressure on stores had not worked, Ms. Brown called on parents and Operation Town Watch Integrated Services, which typically helps neighborhoods fight crime and drugs.

“I need you to go to those stores and say, ‘Look, can you not sell to our kids between 8:15 and 8:30?’ ”Ms. Brown said, kicking off the effort in January. “ ‘We don’t want them to eat sugary items. There is a breakfast program right here. And if you don’t do this, we’re going to have to boycott for a while.’ ”

Now, Ms. Brown and the parents who have willingly gone along with her plan, are claiming success.

But after several weeks of parent intervention, Ms. Brown said more children were skipping the corner stores, showing progress against the pull of sweet snacks.

The bottom line is we all want our kids to be healthy but when a school sends the food police into the streets to intercept our kids it is crossing the line. We are seeing this assault on the rights of parents across the country. It’s time to reassert our authority and remind public employees and elected officials that they are not in charge, in fact they work for us.

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

UPDATE: A Yahoo news commentary, Are Some Parents Taking ‘Food Police’ Role Too Far?:

Although no children were handcuffed, the idea of screening what others buy at the grocery store, even if the consumers are chubby children, unravels yet another thread of freedom in America’s social fabric. Do we really want to live in a country where we tell people how to spend their money? It’s one thing to covertly observe what your neighbor has in her grocery store cart, but another to remark she is buying too much junk food or ask the checker not to ring up offending items.

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