Assess Your Program

Once a school wellness team has been identified, the next step is to assess the current situation of the school district -- both the nutrition and physical activity needs of the students and the existing school health policies and practices. An assessment in both areas can provide the necessary information for priority-setting, action-planning and decision-making. Information from these assessments can also raise awareness about the unique issues that affect the students in your community and promote local interest in creating change.

Who Should Be Involved?

A core working group composed of individuals who are knowledgeable about school health policies in your district first review and respond to the assessment questions and present their findings to the team for use in planning. The school nurse and the food service director should certainly be involved in this process.

What Should Be Assessed?

A variety of school level data is needed for planning purposes, and much of it may have been gathered during the policy development phase. If you haven’t already done so, your team should have any available data about:

1. The number of children eating breakfast and/or lunch at school.
2. The time allocated for lunch.
3. Current nutritional standards of school meals, a la carte items, snacks and vending items.
4. Current food and beverage contracts, along with their scope, duration, flexibility and financial implications for school fundraising.
5. Frequency, scheduling, length, staffing and funding for PE.
6. Space, equipment and time constraints that limit physical activity before, during or after school.
7. Any provisions in union contracts or benefits programs relating to staff health.

Assessment Tools

There are a number of other tools available to help evaluate the nutritional quality of school meals and other aspects of the school food environment, PE curriculum and the health education program. A number of these can be found under Documents and Resources.