The reign of the lawsuit in public schools continues. Over the years, the desire to protect children from every possible threat (that is, protect school systems from the threat of legal action) has turned teacher-student hugs into handshakes after the first grade, ended lively games of dodge ball in P.E. class and nearly wiped out the celebration of most major holidays.

Instead of students' bringing their varied traditions to the schoolhouse so everyone might learn from them, we are moving toward a vanilla system in which most holidays are simply ignored. In fact, the only holiday still truly "correct" for celebration in the schools is Thanksgiving.

Well, hold on to your hats, pilgrims. That one may be taking a hit soon, too.

I found out about this on the night before Halloween -- one of the verboten holidays -- when I picked up my sons from school and began ticking off a list of things we needed to accomplish that evening: check costumes, carve pumpkins, make cupcakes.

Then came the interruption.

"You can't bring cupcakes," Harley, 6, declared from the back seat.

"No, no, I cleared it with your teacher," I explained. "They're not going to be Halloween cupcakes. They're going to be harvest cupcakes."

"No, no, no," he said. "The teachers had a meeting yesterday. You're not allowed to bring food from home anymore. It's about food poisoning."

"That's absurd," I said. "I'd like to see one documented case of food poisoning from a cupcake."

"Okaaaay," Harley replied. "You can bring 'em, but we won't be able to eat 'em."

Turns out Harley wasn't exactly right, but he wasn't wrong, either. There's no rule against cupcakes and cookies just yet.

But in a memo to school systems statewide, the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Department of Public Instruction warned schools about the hazards of allowing parents to bring food from home -- particularly foods that need to be kept hot or cold, and foods containing meat or dairy products.

The reason for the memo was a terrible incident last year in Robeson County, in which several children tried homemade butter at a school event and landed in the hospital with E. coli.

And here's the line that strikes fear in every school administrator's heart: "We know of at least one suit being brought against the Robeson County School System in connection with this outbreak."

The memo, distributed to Wake schools in October, distinguishes between high-risk foods and low-risk. (Unpasteurized dairy vs. cookies -- duh.)

But it also suggests: "In general, schools should not allow anyone to bring in foods from noncommercial sources."

In other words, halt the home cooking.

The upshot may be the demise of the annual Thanksgiving potlucks that bring families and teachers together for a rare holiday celebration at school.

I hope not. But those lawsuits seem to trump common sense all the time.

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