Paul Parks: School breakfast advocate

Paul Parks, former secretary of education for the state of Massachusetts, died last month.

Although Parks’ name may mean nothing to most of you—his passing would have gone unnoticed by me had it not been brought to my attention by the Food Research and Action Center—but school foodservice professionals should know that he was a champion of school foodservice programs.

In 1974, then-Gov. Michael Dukakis appointed Parks as education secretary, the first black to serve in Dukakis’s cabinet. Although the appointment was derided by some as politically motivated, Parks proved the critics wrong showing his passion for education.

Under Parks’ direction, Massachusetts became one of the first states in the nation to implement a breakfast program in its public schools, and the Department of Education still strongly supports school breakfast.

Of course, most people in Boston will remember Parks for another reason: when Boston began to integrate public schools in the 1970s, Parks rode school buses in South Boston with black students. According to newspaper accounts, Parks often shielded children from the rocks and bottles being thrown at them and their buses.

In the 1980s, when the Boston School Committee changed from an elected to an appointed body, Mayor Raymond Flynn named Parks its first chairman. He served in that capacity until 1994.

“[Parks] commanded a presence because he had this peculiar voice that when he spoke, people listened,’’ Flynn told the Boston Globe. “It was almost like a voice from up high.’’

When I read of Parks’ death, I researched articles about him to learn more about his thoughts on school foodservice. I found none, only the mention of his starting the Massachusetts program. But school foodservice directors and other educators now acknowledge the value of eating breakfast and its importance on the ability of children to concentrate and learn in school.

So while others will honor Parks’ commitment to equal and high-quality education, we should remember him as that rare administrator who saw true value in school meal programs. In many ways, Paul Parks was a man ahead of his time.