Peeved Politician Goes Public Over School Lunch Pizza Pill
By Neil S. Friedman

IS 278 sixth grader Taylor Casanova (center) shows her brown-bag lunch that she now prefers ever since she found a mystery pill in her pre-cooked school lunch pizza two weeks ago. Flanking her are her mother, Tracy (left) and City Councilman Lew Fidler. Neil S. Friedman

City Councilman Lew Fidler held a press conference on the steps of the entrance to Marine Park Junior High School last Thursday to update the media eight days after a student at the school discovered an unidentified pill in her school lunch pizza.

Taylor Casanova, 12, a sixth grader at the intermediate school on Stuart Street, sat down to eat her pre-cooked personal pizza on March 10, but after taking a couple of bites, she felt something unusual. She spit out the object, which turned out to be a yellow and white tablet without any markings.

The youngster said when she reported the episode to a school cafeteria employee, the woman said one of her friends was "playing a sick joke" on her.

When IS 278 Principal Debbie Garofalo learned about the incident, she ordered the pizza pulled from the lunch menu and contacted the Department of Education’s (DOE) Food Services unit, which sent investigators and poison control personnel to the school. They determined the episode was an "isolated incident" and never issued a report.

When the student’s mother, Tracy, heard that and believed the matter was going to end there, she contacted Fidler, her district’s councilman, because she wanted to know exactly what the pill was.

The two-term Brooklyn Democrat contacted the Food Services unit and was informed it would take 30 days — the standard procedure — to have the tablet examined by a Long Island laboratory, which has a contract with the DOE. He was also told the pizza would not be recalled or removed from school lunches citywide.

At this point, Fidler was dually angry and incredulous.

"It’s nothing short of playing Russian roulette with the kids eating school lunch," Fidler told the
Daily News on the eve of the press conference.

Fidler contacted the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, which sent an investigator to the Long Island lab to retrieve the pill and have it examined at its crime lab. After analysis, the DA’s office determined the pill was neither a narcotic nor an illegally controlled substance.

A spokesman for the DA last week said the incident is still under investigation.

Councilman Fidler’s chief of staff, Bryan Lee, confirmed yesterday that the DA’s office is still in possession of the pill and a final analysis of its contents will be forthcoming.

Taylor Casanova would probably rather not "brown bag" it for lunch every day, nonetheless her and her mother prefer the guaranteed safety of homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwiches over pizza with a pill
topping.