Articles in the Wellness category

NSBA remembers leading school health advocate

The National School Boards Association (NSBA) is mourning the passing of Brenda Z. Greene, a leading national expert who oversaw NSBA’s school heath policies and programs for almost a quarter century until her retirement last summer.

Photo of Brenda Z. Greene

Brenda Z. Greene promoting NSBA's school health programs.

Greene, who died Friday, joined NSBA’s staff in 1983 and was named Director of School Health Programs in 1987 when the organization received its first funding award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Adolescent and School Health. She remained in the position until her retirement in July 2011.

NSBA’s Executive Director Anne L. Bryant said Greene “helped NSBA become the lead education organization on school health issues.” Working with grant funding from CDC and other agencies, Greene worked in partnership with state school board associations and “helped others to be pro-active within their states, communities, and local school districts.”

“Brenda was an extraordinary leader on behalf of school board members and children, and a tireless advocate for healthy students and healthy schools,” Bryant said. “Starting more than three decades ago, she raised the issues few were willing to even discuss, such as HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, and tobacco use. Her presence will be missed.”

Alexis Rice|February 5th, 2012|Categories: Wellness|Tags: , |

NSBA releases new policy guide on food allergies

Questions still abound about the tragic death of 7-year-old Ammaria Johnson, a Virginia elementary student who apparently suffered a fatal allergic reaction last week at school.

While investigators continue to piece together what happened on that fateful day, the incident highlights the importance of addressing food allergies among school-aged children, which has risen by double digits in the last decade.   

“Since children spend a considerable amount of time in school, it is inevitable that emergencies, such as allergic reactions, will occur in the school,” said Anne L. Bryant, NSBA’s executive director. ”As school boards strive to improve the academic success of students, they cannot lose sight of the health challenges some students face and the need to prevent and effectively respond to health emergencies in school.”

Toward this end, NSBA has published “Safe at School and Ready to Learn: A Comprehensive Policy Guide for Protecting Students with Life-threatening Food Allergies“ to help school leaders establish policies and practices that support the safety, well-being, and academic success of students with life-threatening food allergies.  

Developed with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and, in response to the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act , this publication emphasizes the role of schools in protecting students with life-threatening food allergies.

The guide focuses on the need for schools to partner with families, and healthcare providers in identifying and supporting individual student needs and preparing management plans. Further, it provides recommendations on following medication protocols; establishing a coordinated system to prevent and respond to food allergy-related emergencies across the school environment; communicating with and educating parents, students, and school personnel; and monitoring and evaluating policies and practices.

The publication also includes a checklist for schools to assess the extent to which the guide’s components are included in food allergy policies and practices being developed and implemented; sample state and local education policies; as well as a glossary of commonly used terms and a list of resources related to food allergies.

To access this publication online and for further information on addressing food allergies in schools, visit NSBA’s Food Allergies & Schools webpage.

 

Naomi Dillon|January 9th, 2012|Categories: NSBA Publications, Policy Formation, School Board News, Wellness|Tags: , |

Law gives schools flexibility on location of special services, NSBA says

Federal law requires school districts to provide students with disabilities a free appropriate public education, but it is up to the district to decide where that requirement can best be met, NSBA and the Kentucky School Boards Association (KSBA) said in a brief filed for R.K. v. Board of Education of Scott County, Kentucky recently in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The case was initiated in 2009, when “R.K,” a student with Type I diabetes, was in kindergartener in Scott County, Ky. Initially, R.K. needed insulin injections during the school day, but later he began using an insulin pump that required accurate input of certain dietary information.

The NSBA-KSBA brief noted that the Kentucky Board of Nursing had advised schools not to delegate the responsibility for monitoring insulin pumps to other staff. With this recommendation in mind, the district told R. K.’s parents that he could attend one of two elementary with onsite nurses. However, the parents said the district had an obligation to educate R.K. at his neighborhood school, and sued.

A district court judge ruled in June that R.K. had no “absolute right” to attend his neighborhood school, and the parents appealed the decision to the 6th Circuit.

The NBSA-KSBA brief says there is a fundamental difference between an “educational placement” decision, concerning the types of services and supports offered to a student, and the “physical location” where those services are provided.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) requires that students be educated in “the least restrictive environment,” the brief says. However, in the Kentucky case, NSBA and KSBA said, “the student does not allege he has been removed from education with his non-disabled peers; his sole allegation is that he was denied assignment to his neighborhood school.”

NSBA General Counsel Francisco M. Negrón Jr. said Section 504 does not require districts to educate children with disabilities in their neighborhood school.

“The court should not read into Section 504 a requirement that a school district be required to provide all disability-related services to students in their neighborhood schools,” Negrón said.

“In addition to minimizing the role of the individualized education program staffing process, such a ruling could needlessly increase costs by minimizing the flexibility of school districts in managing limited resources.”

NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant said a decision against the school district threatens the “common practice of deploying the districts’ resources in a many that is both fiscally responsible and educationally sound.”

Lawrence Hardy|October 20th, 2011|Categories: School Law, Special Education, Student Achievement, Wellness|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |

Involving families in schools: addressing opportunities and challenges

It is common sense that family involvement in schools is essential to increasing student achievement.  Research also suggests it reduces risky behaviors and improves attitudes about school among students.

However, family involvement in schools doesn’t always come easy.  For one, schools and parents often have a different understanding of what that involvement should look like.  In addition, there can be cultural and language barriers and other issues such as lack of knowledge about how the school system works that make it difficult to get families involved.  So what can school board members do to seize opportunities and address challenges to involving families in schools?

A new National School Boards Association (NSBA) publication, Families as Partners: Fostering Family Engagement for Healthy and Successful Students, presents an interesting suggestion.   According to the publication, from a school district perspective, family engagement in health issues can be an excellent first step toward getting families involved in schools as they are often more willing to address health issues than potentially intimidating academic issues.  In fact, a recently published Center for Public Education (CPE) document shows a similar thread and relays that an effective means to getting families at the door can be a targeted involvement to solve a particular problem – like poor attendance or behavior.

At first it can seem overwhelming to involve families in schools as families comes with differing views and expectations regarding the school system and their children’s learning.  But the benefits outweigh the challenges and ultimately improve student achievement!  So in thinking of ways to address challenges and seize opportunities to involving families, BoardBuzz would like you to check out some important strategies outlined in the documents above:

  • Recognize that all families, regardless of income, education, or cultural background are involved in their children’s learning and want their children to do well;
  • Investigate how families want to be involved and how teachers want families to be involved;
  • Address family involvement through a coordinated school health framework, which includes a family involvement component;
  • Foster district-wide strategies including reviewing policies and procedures to effectively engage families;
  • Ask what families need to know to be involved and how well your district and schools are meeting those needs;
  • Build the capacity of your board and staff to strengthen family engagement; and
  • Continue to survey or track the effects of involvement.

To learn more about steps to take to accomplish some of those strategies, view Families as Partners.  In addition, check out NSBA’s new Family Engagement in School Health webpage to access relevant resources such as sample policies, surveys, and tools created by NSBA to help school leaders better engage families.

How is your school district addressing family involvement?  What have been some of the outcomes?  Drop us a comment!

Daniela Espinosa|October 7th, 2011|Categories: Boardbuzz, Student Achievement, Wellness|Tags: , |

NSBA releases family engagement resource

A new document by the National School Boards Association’s (NSBA) School Health Programs, which was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), aims to cultivate the relationship between schools and families, with an eye toward nurturing healthy students and a healthy school environment.

Families as Partners: Fostering Family Engagement for Healthy and Successful Students, provides an overview of this critical component of student and school success and offers guidance, strategies, and resources for developing and implementing effective family engagement policies and practices.

According to the document, family engagement in schools has been shown to reduce risky behaviors and improve academic achievement and attitudes about school among students.

The publication also suggests that building connections around school and children’s health issues not only serves as a less intimidating entry point for families, but can reap multiple benefits.

“Family engagement is important to a positive school climate, as well as, to the development of promising school health policies and practices that benefit all students and prepare them for a healthy and successful future,” said Anne L. Bryant, NSBA’s executive director.

It should be noted that families come in all shapes and sizes, and the use of the word family is an all-inclusive generic term. Regardless of their makeup, according to the document, “families and school staff share the responsibility to counter unhealthy influences and help students lead healthy, productive lives.”

And coordinated school health—an eight-step model that the CDC developed— is a sensible way to address risky behaviors among students. Not surprisingly, one of the key components in the CDC coordinated school health framework is family involvement.

Families as Partners highlights a handful of well-regarded strategies to bolster family involvement, including the model developed by noted Johns Hopkins University sociology professor Joyce L. Epstein.

Among the steps a district should take is a review of their own policies on family involvement. Chances are districts can build on their existing efforts to address family engagement in health, nutrition, and safety.

In tandem with an internal review, is an external strategy to bring families into the fold, whether it’s through community meetings, surveys, standing committees, or other opportunities where two-way dialogue can occur.

Besides the Families as Partners document, more smart tips and best practices, including a fact sheet on health and learning, sample family engagement policies, and sample surveys to engage families, can be found on the new family engagement webpage on NSBA’s website.

 

 

Naomi Dillon|September 28th, 2011|Categories: Nutrition, School Climate, Student Achievement, Wellness|Tags: , |

Concussion prevention laws, practices spreading

Recent news headlines have highlighted a proliferation of youth concussion prevention regulations and strategies across the country.

From Arizona, which apparently is the first state to require student athletes to pass a test based on a traumatic brain injury video they must watch, to Virginia, which became one of nearly two dozen states to write concussion prevention among students into law in the past six months.

In the August edition of ASBJ, I tackled the issue of youth concussions, which remains a largely misunderstood injury.  Among one of the more intriguiging revelations in the story: restricting physical exertion of injured student is only half the battle– in fact, it’s even less.

“We spend 90 percent of our time in the clinic, around how to return that kid to school,” Gerald Gioa, chief of neuropsychology at  Children’s National Medical Center in Washington D.C., told me. “The sports side is the easy part. I can easily restrict sports it’s not so easy to restrict the academic side.”

To learn more about this serious, yet highly preventable injury, read the August cover story, online for free for a limited time.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

 

Naomi Dillon|August 17th, 2011|Categories: Athletics, Crisis Management, Leading Source, Wellness|

Food allergies more common, severe than previously thought

This week, the findings of the largest study of food allergies among U.S. children were released. In a nutshell (no pun intended), its worse than health officials thought.

The new research, which surveyed some 38,000 parents, suggests that roughly 6 million or 1 in every 12 American kids below the age of 18 suffer from food allergies.

This is up from a 2009 estimate by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which besides pegging the  prevalence of childhood allergies at 1 in every 26 children, noted that this figure had risen by 18 percent between 1997 and 2007.

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Naomi Dillon|June 22nd, 2011|Categories: Educational Research, Leading Source, Wellness|Tags: |

House approves funding bill with child nutrition report

NSBA is pleased that the House of Representatives has passed HR 2112, the FY 2012 Agriculture Appropriations bill, with the committee’s report language on child nutrition intact.  Although the report language is non-binding, NSBA’s legislative advocacy team feels it sends a powerful message regarding congressional intent to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA is charged with writing regulations for the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization, which was approved late last year.

The report language states: “New Nutrition Requirements for the School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs.-The Committee notes that FNS [Food Nutrition Services] has responded to the actions required by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, P.L. 111-296. The Committee urges restraint and practical timelines for implementing new national nutrition standards in the school breakfast and lunch programs. As many of the representatives in states and local school districts have cautioned, an overly aggressive implementation schedule and unrealistic demands on changes in nutrient content can lead to burdensome costs, estimated to be about $7 billion over 5 years. Therefore, the Committee directs FNS to issue a new proposed rule that would not require an increase in the cost of providing school meals.”

Read more about school nutrition issues at: www.nsba.org/Advocacy/Key-Issues/SchoolNutrition.

Joetta Sack-Min|June 17th, 2011|Categories: Educational Legislation, Food Service, Nutrition, Obesity, Wellness|

NSBA receives award to promote coordinated school health

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently awarded NSBA a new five-year cooperative agreement to promote Coordinated School Health (CSH) with school leaders and other decision makers and opinion leaders.

The CSH model, an approach recommended by the CDC for improving students’ health and learning, has eight critical, interrelated components: health education; physical education; health services; mental health and social services; nutrition services; healthy and safe environment; family and community involvement; and staff wellness.

“This project will give school board members and administrators access to targeted information and assistance to facilitate district progress toward the CSH approach, including a CSH webpage with links to the best resources and to useful webinars,” says NSBA School Health Director Brenda Z. Greene. “By using the CSH systemic approach, schools can increase their capacity to eliminate gaps and reduce redundancies in meeting student needs; build partnerships and teamwork among health and education professionals; and focus efforts on helping students engage in protective, health-enhancing behaviors and avoid risk behaviors – all of which are aligned with school leaders’ goals to increase student achievement.”

NSBA has been working with the CSH model since 1990, and this new project underscores the essential role of school boards and administrators to lead effective CSH in schools by creating and implementing school health policies and practices.

Last month, NSBA completed a five-year project to help school leaders understand the link between student health and learning and the CSH models. In one instance, NSBA worked with the Kentucky School Boards Association and the Kentucky Department of Education on a project with school districts that integrated health and wellness objectives and aligned actions in their district improvement plans.  And NSBA developed and disseminated “What School Boards Can Do To Enhance Student Learning by Supporting a Coordinated Approach to Health,” which aligns with NSBA’s Key Work of School Boards framework, created by NSBA to support and guide school boards in their goal to raise student achievement.  The Key Work framework also includes eight key action areas that foster a systems-thinking approach and, like the CSH model, contains a community involvement piece through collaboration.

Through the cooperative agreement, NSBA will work with and through its state associations to share its expertise and experience with CSH and school health issues. NSBA plans to expand its continuum of school health information services, technical assistance, and collaborations among school board members, administrators, and others to: 1) Increase the engagement and effectiveness of education leaders to promote, develop and implement policies and practices that support CSH and improve education and health outcomes; and 2) broaden and strengthen support for CSH to foster sustainability of effective policies and practices.

NSBA will conduct strategic planning in the first six months of the project, which will be guided by a workgroup comprised of various stakeholders.  Following this process, which includes the input of NSBA’s state school boards associations and their members, NSBA will form a national cadre of school board members and administrators that will educate and mentor other state and district school leaders on policies and practices that support CSH.

For more information, please contact schoolhealth@nsba.org.

Joetta Sack-Min|June 10th, 2011|Categories: Wellness|

USDA seeks to limit potatoes presence in school meals

baked_potatoOnce a staple of Americans’ meat-and-potato diets, the lowly spud may soon be banned from school cafeterias. But not without a fight.

A recently proposed rule by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that would eliminate white potatoes from federally subsidized school breakfasts and limit their serving at lunch has set off another round of protests about the federal government’s school nutrition regulations.

The USDA proposal would limit starchy vegetables, such as potatoes, corn, peas and lima beans, to a total of one cup per week for federally subsidized school lunches.

The potato industry is now promoting its product as a “true gateway vegetable” that could lead kids to broccoli, according to the Wall Street Journal.

I’m not convinced about that, but Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, which is one of the leading states producing potatoes, noted at a hearing that the spud contains more nutrients than iceberg lettuce, which hasn’t been banned.

As the potato industry mobilizes its lobbyists, some school nutritionists are also defending the spud. The Gooding school district in Idaho, which won a USDA award for schools that feed children healthier meals and promote physical activity, will lose its twice-a-week potato bar, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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Naomi Dillon|May 23rd, 2011|Categories: Governance, Leading Source, Policy Formation, Wellness|Tags: , |
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