FILE:  JGB

Cf:  EE

SCHOOL WELLNESS

The Sabine Parish School Board recognizes that schools should play a vital role in promoting student health, preventing childhood obesity, and combating problems associated with poor nutrition and physical inactivity.  The School Board shall promote a healthy school environment by supporting and emphasizing student wellness, good nutrition, and regular physical activity and making these an integral part of the total learning environment.

Schools have a responsibility to help students learn, establish, and maintain patterns of nutrition and physical activity that facilitate a healthy environment.  Well-planned and effectively implemented school nutrition and fitness programs serve to enhance a student’s overall health, as well as their behavior and academic achievement.  The School Board shall require that all foods made available on school campuses should offer children nutritious choices, and physical activity should be incorporated into the school day as often as possible.

The Sabine Parish School Board shall develop, implement, and maintain a comprehensive plan to encourage healthy eating and physical activity in all public schools of Sabine Parish.  The plan shall make effective use of school and community resources and equitably serve the needs and interests of all schools and staff.

SPECIFIC WELLNESS GOALS

Nutrition Education

The school district will:

1. Promote and implement nutrition education that promotes lifelong healthful eating practices.
   
   

2. Use lessons that are age-appropriate, with behaviorally focused content that is developmentally appropriate and culturally relevant.
   
   

3. Use lessons that are sequential and are correlated with standards, benchmarks, and grade level expectations.
   
   

4. Provide hands-on activities that are fun.
   
   

5. Provide repeated opportunities for students to taste foods that are low in fat, sodium and added sugars and high in vitamins, minerals and fiber.
   
   

6. Focus on positive aspects of healthful eating behaviors.
   
   

7. Promote social learning techniques such as role modeling, providing incentives, developing social resistance skills, overcoming barriers to behavioral changes and goal setting.

Physical Activity

The school district will:

1. Promote and implement quality physical education programs that emphasize and promote participation in lifelong physical activities and reaching a health enhancing level of physical fitness among all students.
   
   

2. Provide students in grades K-8 with a minimum of 150 minutes per week of health and physical education.
   
   

3. Ensure that students in grades K-8 participate in planned, organized, moderate to vigorous physical activity for a minimum of 30 minutes each school day.
   
   

4. Strive toward having qualified, certified physical education teachers guide physical activity instruction in all elementary grades as well as in middle and high school physical education classes.
   
   

5. Provide staff development on standards implementation for physical education instructors.

Other School-Based Activities

The school district will:

1. Offer classroom health education that complements physical education by reinforcing the knowledge and self-management skills needed to maintain a physically active lifestyle and to reduce time spent on sedentary activities;
   
   

2. Recognize that daily physical activity is essential to student welfare and academic performance.
   
   

3. Encourage physical activity during recess for elementary students, intramural programs, integration in the academic curriculum, and clubs, as well as in physical education programs.
   
   Each school that includes any of the grades kindergarten through five shall provide at least fifteen (15) minutes of recess, consisting of supervised, unstructured free play, each school day.
   
   

4. Encourage parents and guardians to support students’ participation in physical activities, to be physically active role models, and to include physical activities in family plans.
   
   

5. Provide parents a list of foods that meet the School Board’s snack standards and ideas for health celebrations/parties, rewards and fundraising activities.
   
   

6. Encourage school staff to participate in physical activities to serve as role models.
   
   

7. Support community-based physical activity programs.

Nutrition Guidelines

Student’s lifelong eating habits are greatly influenced by the types of foods and beverages available in their daily environment.  In addition to ensuring that reimbursable school meals meet all requirements of the Nutritional School Lunch Program outlined in federal and state regulations, the School Board shall develop and maintain specific nutritional guidelines to address all food and beverages sold or served to students, including those items made available to students outside of the school meal programs.

Water:

To promote hydration, free, safe, unflavored drinking water will be available to all students throughout the school day and throughout every school campus.  The School District will make drinking water available where school meals are served during mealtimes.

Competitive Foods and Beverages:

The School District is committed to ensuring that all foods and beverages available to students on the school campus during the school day support healthy eating.  The foods and beverages sold and served outside of the school meal programs (e.g., “competitive” foods and beverages) shall meet the USDA Smart Snacks in School nutrition standards, at a minimum.  Smart Snacks aim to improve student health and well-being, increase consumption of healthful foods during the school day and create an environment that reinforces the development of healthy eating habits.

Celebrations and Rewards:

Food will not be used as a reward or withheld as punishment for any reason, such as performance or behavior.

Food for celebrations, parties, fundraising and classroom snacks provided by parents will be approved by the administration.

Nutrition Promotion

Nutrition promotion and education positively influence lifelong eating behaviors by using evidence-based techniques and nutrition messages, and by creating food environments that encourage healthy nutrition choices and encourage participation in school meal programs.  Students and staff will receive consistent nutrition messages throughout schools, classrooms, gymnasiums, and cafeterias.  Nutrition promotion also includes marketing and advertising nutritious foods and beverages to students and is most effective when implemented consistently through a comprehensive and multi-channel approach by school staff, teachers, parents, students and the community.  The School District will promote healthy food and beverage choices for all students throughout the school campus, as well as encourage participation in school meal programs. This promotion will occur through at least:

• Implementing at least ten (10) or more evidence-based healthy food promotion techniques through the school meal programs using Smarter Lunchroom techniques; and
  
  

• Ensuring 100% of foods and beverages promoted to students meet the USDA Smart Snacks in School nutrition standards. Additional promotion techniques that the School District and individual schools may use are available at http://www.foodplanner.healthiergeneration.org/.

MONITORING AND POLICY REVIEW

Monitoring

The Superintendent or his/her designee shall be responsible for assuring compliance with established district-wide nutrition and physical activity wellness policies.  In each school, the principal or designee will ensure compliance with those policies in his/her school and shall report on the school’s compliance to the Superintendent or his/her designee.

School food service staff, at the school or district level, shall assess compliance with nutrition policies within school food service areas and report on this matter to the Superintendent (or if done at the school level, to the school principal).

The Superintendent or his/her designee shall develop a summary report at least annually on compliance with the school district’s established nutrition and physical activity wellness policies, based on input from schools within the district.  The report shall be provided to the School Board, the district’s School Health Advisory Council (SHAC), and also distributed to the schools, parent/teacher organizations, school principals, and school health services personnel throughout the parish.

Policy Review

Assessments shall be taken annually to help review policy compliance, assess progress, and determine areas in need of improvement.  As part of that review, the School Board and staff shall review all nutrition and physical activity policies; provision of an environment that supports healthy eating and physical activity; and nutrition and physical education policies and program elements using the Louisiana Department of Education Wellness Policy Evaluation tool and share these results with the School Health Advisory Council (SHAC).  The School Board and individual schools within the district shall, as necessary, revise the wellness policies and develop work plans to facilitate their implementation.

Ref:    42 USC 1751 et seq. (Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act)

42 USC 1771 et seq. (Child Nutrition Act of 1966)

7 CFR 210 (National School Lunch Program)

7 CFR 210.31 (Local School Wellness Policy)

7 CFR 220 (School Breakfast Program)

La. Rev. Stat. Ann.  §§17:17.1, 17:17.7, 17:197.1

Board minutes, 2-1-10, 7-19-10, 9-14-20, 11-14-22, 1-8-24

Sabine Parish School Board