Creativity Abounds In Local Wellness Policies

Third-grader Mikayla Busse and her classmates participate in a stretching exercise in Ron Hanson's physical education class at Appleton's Horizons Elementary School. Photo gallery

By Molly Thompson

Districts throughout the state are preparing for the reauthorized Child Nutrition Act, which requires school districts that participate in federally subsidized child nutrition programs to have local wellness policies in place by next fall.

Some districts are ahead of the curve – Appleton and Lac du Flambeau finalized policies in 2003, and West Bend has been working on a policy for almost two years.

Because the law requires community input and allows local jurisdiction in developing wellness policies, educators are taking the opportunity to look around and learn what's already going on in their schools – outside their own classrooms – and using their imagination to find ways to create a new culture around sound nutrition and healthy amounts of physical activity.

Appleton

The Appleton School District's nationally acclaimed Education for Healthy Kids model has been in the works since the state received a nearly $6 billion tobacco settlement in the late 1990s.

"That's when we started talking about adding more physical education time and more health education," said Ron Hanson, a physical education teacher and guidance counselor at Horizons Elementary School.

At that time, Hanson was at Johnston Elementary School, where the Education for Healthy Kids program started. Many credit Hanson and Mikki Duran, who organizes the PEP grant programs, for getting Education for Healthy Kids off the ground. But Hanson said students should get credit.

"We started with a strong program for elementary kids where we taught them to make healthy choices and stay active, and when they went to middle school they were shocked at what they were expected to do and eat - they were appalled to see what was in the vending machines," Hanson said. "They went to the administration and started asking questions."

As part of the Appleton policy, all instructional staff are encouraged to incorporate nutrition education into daily lessons, when appropriate. Themes include: understanding calories and food labels, serving sizes, proper sanitation and identifying junk food.

"This isn't just for health and phy. ed teachers," Hanson said. "We break up the day with 'Energizers,' which are cross-body, cross-brain, short activities. For instance, some teachers have found it takes about 3.5 minutes to have the kids run from the classroom to the fence on the back area of the school. Our policy did a simple thing - it made teachers feel they had permission to get the kids up and moving."

Successful policies have to allow for the fact that not all educators are trained on nutrition and exercise, Hanson said. That's why the Appleton program is student-motivated.

"We try to make it as easy as possible for teachers," he said. "We teach the students exercise games and then the students ask their teachers for a few minutes here and there to go play the games and get their heart rates up. We have heart rate monitors all ready for them in the gym."

A wellness policy shouldn't add to a teacher's already full curriculum, Hanson said.

"Teachers look at what they are currently teaching and see what makes sense," he said. "For instance, a science class studying the digestive track could look at how processed foods affect nutrition absorption."

Hanson said policies should focus on the youngest students.

“The earlier you intervene, the more it seems to have long-term results,” he said. “We have kindergarteners who lay on their backs and can’t pick their head up – they are a long way from doing a sit up. We have 6th graders who haven’t been in the program who can’t do one pushup. And we have 2nd and 3rd graders who have been in the program who can do 25 pushups.”

Through the years, the program grew because it proved to be improving the overall education climate of the school.

"Every budget, the Healthy Kids program was reviewed, and we were worried it would be cut," Hanson said. "The school board wanted proof it was working, so they questioned the kids and were amazed at how healthy they were. The board of education saw a whole culture had formed around being healthy. Instead of cutting the program they said, 'Let's do this at more schools.'"

The school board ultimately voted out junk food and candy fundraisers in June 2003 as part of the wellness policy. The policy also restricts soda from being sold before or during the school day. Starting this fall, the only beverages sold before and during school will be water, milk and 100% fruit juice.

Instead of focusing on what not to eat, Appleton nutritional standards promote nutrient-dense foods. For example, nuts and seeds are exempt from a 30% fat limit, because they contain high levels of monounsaturated fat, which help lower LDL cholesterol.

Appleton even included the lunchroom environment in its nutritional policy, saying it should "provide students with a relaxed, enjoyable climate." Students should also have at least 20 minutes for meals from the time they are seated, a convenient place to wash their hands prior to eating, and they should have adequate space and pleasant surroundings, the policy says.

Lac du Flambeau

The Healthy Lifestyles Action Team – consisting of representatives from the school, and community and state agencies – used samples of policies from various parts of the country to help it draft Lac du Flambeau's wellness policy.

"Since there were some parents and community members on the committee, that helped," said Sue Wolfe, federal program coordinator for Lac du Flambeau schools. "But in hindsight, it would have been more useful to have more parents involved and input from students as well."

Wolfe said students have accepted changes, such as no soda in the vending machines, with no complaints.

"Most students, parents and community members have responded to the policy in a positive way because they know the intent of the policy is to have healthier children who will grow up into healthier adults," Wolfe said.

Wolfe advises other districts drafting wellness policies now to hold focus groups with students, parents, school staff, and the community to gather input, even though some of these groups may be represented on the committee that drafts the policy.

"We also had two school board members who were on the team which helped to get approval from the whole school board when it came time to present the policy to the board," she said.

Lac du Flambeau's nutritional guidelines for K-8 students include encouraging water consumption by allowing students to carry water bottles when possible, cutting fat in reimbursable meals to less than 30%, banning foods or snacks that contain more than one-third of its weight from added sugar and serving only non-flavored milk at breakfast.

West Bend

The West Bend School District is on track to have a K-12 policy on file this summer. The first thing it did was create a mission statement based the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's eight components of a coordinated school health program. Then, the district solicited input from the community, and used the input and the CDC information to make goals.

Health teacher Cathy Spies uses fast-food nutrition pamphlets to teach students they can usually make healthier choices – even in unlikely places.

"We're not looking at this like 'let's hurry and put a policy in place,'" said Dorreen Dembski, public information officer for the West Bend School District. "This is about making changes that will benefit the health of our staff and students."

"People told us that having choices is very important to them," Dembski said. "They don't want to be forced into being healthy. They want to choose, so we need to tailor our plan to focus on choice."

Now, teachers and staff are filling out detailed surveys about food-related or physical activities they are facilitating.

"We're looking at things like how often do teachers reward students with food or what kind of field trips they may take," Dembski said. "We're not looking at these things negatively – we just don't know."

Health experts say doling out food as rewards can be overlooked as a source of extra calories for typically sedentary students.

"As an educator, you want to reward kids for doing a good job, and sometimes an easy way to do that is a candy bar," Dembski said. "But if you reward a student with a candy bar, and then another teacher – who doesn't know -- gives them a candy bar, that could be two candy bars in one day. How many times could this happen in a week?"

But this is about more than candy bars – it's about cultural change, Dembski said.

"When you have a celebration in school, someone will bring brownies, someone will bring soda – it's cultural to throw a pizza party," Dembski said. "We don’t want to be the bad guys; we just want to think and look at what we are doing."

Ultimately, successful wellness policies could be another mark of quality in a district.

"You can have success in academic achievement, but what if the students and staff aren't well-balanced, or obese and at-risk for diseases like diabetes?" Dembski asked. "The policy has to make a difference."

Read part I: Mandated changes coming to fight child obesity

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Posted December 7, 2005