FAQs: Answers to Common Questions about School Wellness

Set up a meeting with the contractor to determine what changes can be made under terms of the existing contract. Consider bringing together a group of parents, students, parents and administrators to brainstorm with the contractor about how to improve choices within the budget. For instance, the contractor may be able to replace sugar cereals with non-sugar cereals in the breakfast program; change to no-sugar-added peanut butter; or eliminate fried foods. If the contractor is unable or unwilling to make changes to the program, it might be necessary to change vendors at the earliest possible date, depending on the scope of your current contract.

Lack of kitchen facilities is a common barrier to increasing the availability of fresh foods. Under these circumstances, you may be able to work with a company that can provide prepackaged meals prepared with fresh/high quality ingredients. If you’re working with a small budget that limits the amount of fresh food you can serve, it's important to push the supplier as much as possible to limit the amount of fried foods, added sugar, fat and salt.

A drop in sales revenues can occur after introducing healthier items to vending machines, but studies have shown that these changes are usually temporary and recover quickly with the help of on-site promotion. Work with the vending company to promote sales of healthier alternatives through in-cafeteria marketing. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has issued a report that summarizes how school districts have changed the vending programs without loss of revenue. See Documents and Resources for a copy.

There are a number of possible ways to influence students to make healthier choices, even if you can’t eliminate sugary beverages. For instance, you can simply request that the beverage vendor change the product mix to include more water and 100% fruit juices; request that the vendor place less healthy items at the bottom of the beverage vending machine; and/or increase the price for less healthy options.

Provide teachers with non-food reward suggestions, such as getting special privileges, activities or recognition, helping or eating lunch with the teacher, extra recess time for the class, or an extra field trip. See Documents and Resources for more suggestions.

Meet with parent groups, school clubs and athletic booster clubs to explain the importance of using non-food fundraising strategies. Provide alternative ideas, such as raffles, cookbook sales, educational games, walkathons, and school spirit sales, and show how they can be integrated into the current program – and highlight the fact that these new ideas just might raise more money than current alternatives. See Documents and Resources for more suggestions.

There are a couple of things that you can do. Instead of cupcakes for each birthday celebration, designate just one day per month as cupcake day. Also provide teachers and parents with suggestions for other ways to celebrate birthdays and holidays. See 1. Improving Food Available at School. For more information visit Documents and Resources for a helpful Tip Sheet.

Consider partnering with other institutions in the community, such as a Park District, YMCA, youth organizations, churches or synagogues. It might be feasible to use these outside facilities during school hours. In addition, you can increase the amount of physical activity in the classroom. For a handy Tip Sheet and other resources for incorporating physical activity in the classroom, see Documents and Resources.

There are a number of organizations that might provide grant funding for physical fitness. See http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/grants/index.html for information on available grants and possible assistance in writing a grant proposal.

Start by checking with your state chapter of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, which can point you in the direction of resources specific to your state's requirements for Physical Education teachers. For national standards, see
National Standards for Beginning Physical Eduation Teacherƒ under Documents and Resources.

The USDA has many nutrition education resources for teachers. Go to http://teamnutrition.usda.gov/educators.html. For more resources and links, see Documents and Resources.

Experience has shown that teachers and staff become more invested in wellness programs (and more likely to incorporate wellness related messages in their lesson plans) if they see a personal connection between the program and their professional development. Many school districts have had success with staff wellness contests – where staff members earn points for engaging in healthy behaviors such as walking a certain number of steps or drinking a certain amount of water every day. In some school districts, teachers’ unions have included requests for wellness program benefits in their negotiations with school administrators.

Although the federal wellness policy does not include specific outcome measurement guidelines, you can follow these generally accepted guidelines for measuring the impact of your policy:

• Recognize that measurement and evaluation should be on-going so that the policy can be changed and updated as required.
• Identify someone who has responsibility for measurement, evaluation and communication of results to wellness committee members—a district-level employee, a university researcher or community evaluator can be utilized.
• Measure indicators of success as outlined in the wellness policy. If the original policy does not include clear, measurable goals, then before initiatives begin, it is important to step back and set these goals.
• Include staff, student and parent surveys and collect quantitative date about school nutrition and physical activity program in place. See Documents and Resources for assessment and evaluation resources.

Many schools are conducting height and weight measurements of students (and sometimes staff) to gauge the health status of their school population. It can be a valuable tool when looked at in the aggregate, providing a baseline for showing improvement in the school's wellness over time. There is some debate, however, as to whether BMI's should be used to single out individual children for intervention. The Healthy Schools Campaign believes composite BMI's, as opposed to individual student testing, are one of several indicators schools can use to measure the impact of their wellness programs and policies. For further guidance, see Long-Term Success.

There are a number of assessment tools that can be used by schools to conduct a self-assessment of their current health and safety policies and programs and identify areas for improvement. See Long-Term Success: Assess Your Program for more information on how to go about assessing your program. See Documents and Resources for links and downloadable assessment documents.