Fwd: Kick Off Your Week: Prioritizing health and wellness in our schools

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From: Supt. Christina M. Kishimoto <reply@hawaiidoe.org>
Date: Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 10:17 AM
Subject: Kick Off Your Week: Prioritizing health and wellness in our schools
To: <20048903@notes.k12.hi.us>

VIEW EMAIL ONLINE Prioritizing health and wellness in our schools As adults, we know that our mental and emotional well-being are closely tied to our physical health. We've experienced the positive effects that a well-balanced meal and a dose of physical activity can have on our minds and bodies when preparing for a particularly busy or stressful day. For students, research continues to show a strong link between healthy eating, physical activity and improved academic achievement of children and adolescents. On the contrary, students who are physically inactive, who have unhealthy dietary behaviors, and who use tobacco or other drugs are linked with poor academic performance. Our schools are the ideal place to model healthy behaviors for growing and maturing students. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers have found that certain factors in a school environment can positively influence the health of students and boost academic achievement — including academic performance, education behavior and cognitive skills and attitudes. Those factors include access to healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity. Designed to help our schools carry out this important effort with fidelity, our Wellness Guidelines track school-level implementation in the areas of health education and nutrition promotion, nutrition guidelines, physical education, physical activity, professional development, and community outreach and engagement. The guidelines implement the Board of Education's Health and Wellness policy, which requires the Department to provide learning environments and programs that educate and expose students to sound wellness practices, health-enhancing behaviors and good nutrition. It's encouraging to see that overall many of our schools are doing excellent work. The annual Safety and Wellness Survey found our schools had an average School Wellness Score of 81 for the 2017-18 school year, meaning 81 percent of wellness guidelines were met. Nearly one-quarter of our schools scored 90 percent or higher. These 58 schools will be awarded "Excellence in Wellness" banners to recognize their accomplishments. The survey also highlighted the challenges in some of our schools, where: 64 percent of schools reported selling or providing foods outside of the meals program that do not meet Smart Snacks standards; and 42 percent of schools reported selling or providing beverages that do not meet nutritional guidelines. Clearly, there's a lot to celebrate and sustain while we continue to make improvements. HIDOE's goal is for all schools to be in compliance for the 2019-20 school year. I encourage school leadership to empower their students to take an active role in shaping what it means to be a healthy school. Think about engaging your student leaders by encouraging them to use the Wellness Guidelines implementation checklist to assess their school's "health" and to recommend next steps. While students work on school-level goals and peer education, teachers and leaders can partner with parents to design parental education approaches and fun health and wellness goals for staff. Health and wellness is an important partnership between home and school. FOLLOW US: Facebook | Twitter | Vimeo | Pinterest | LinkedIN     ONLINE: HawaiiPublicSchools.org This email was sent to all Hawai'i DOE staff. unsubscribe

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