Steps to Keep Students Safe and Healthy

Presenters: Eva Marx, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hingham, MA; Glenda Wait, Belleville Henderson Central School District, Belleville, NY; Rebecca Partlow, Rock Hill School District 3, Charlotte, SC

This session is presented in separate parts. Use the buttons at the end of the transcription to navigate between each part.

II. Glenda Wait, Belleville Henderson Central School District

GLENDA WAIT: Before I get started, there is a notebook going around that shows our programs and what we've been doing over the last three years, and I would like to have you all share that. We actually started our program about six years ago, and it was something that I brought from another district. We had a comprehensive coordinated school health and wellness program in a little town called Elmira, New York, and then when I became superintendent of the Belleville-Henderson Central School, that was my one passion — to bring a coordinated program to the north country.

We live in a high poverty area, a large district, 108 square miles. We did not have a health coordinator. We taught health in eighth grade, but it was taught by the coaches, often reluctantly. The school nurse was the one assigned as the health coordinator, even though she wasn't really. She is still an integral part of our program, but not what we needed. She was so busy taking care of children every day that we needed someone whose focus was the whole umbrella. So the school board allowed me to hire a health coordinator the end of the first year that I was there. We felt that our factor for success, once we had the health coordinator on board, was the support of the administration. And then, when the health coordinator on board, she decided and we decided together that we need to have grassroots support, so we brought together a team of people who would have different functions in the school. The cafeteria people, the phys-ed people, the home-school coordinator people — we put together a team. And that team started to meet regularly to decide what types of activities for staff wellness and for student wellness.

Our district is small, so that did mean that we could communicate every day, we could make a point of talking to each other, and it's a little harder in four or five different buildings. Now my previous school did have four buildings, and we had school site teams in each building — a group of people that was so excited about health that they met at 7:15 in the morning when they had meetings so they could talk about what they could do for the faculty and the staff and for each other. We started to build a network of community resources. We did the red ribbon campaign and we even involved the churches. They would talk about our efforts for drug-free schools. We wrote letters for money to the banks and asked them to donate to the foundation that we were starting a trust and agency fund for school health and wellness — and that fund has grown quite nicely over the last few years. And so when we don't have enough safe and drug-free schools money, we go to that fund. We also use some of our Title I funds because we are a school-wide program and we can cross over from grants. We feel that we've been accountable and that we've communicated very well with each other.

One of the things that we've done is that we've developed an action plan. Now the concept of an action plan I had brought with me from a team called Lakeside. Lakeside in New York had health programs at the end of every school year, and they'd bring us all together from all over New York State and help us solve school problems, and that's where I first heard action plan and learned how to do an action plan. We started doing those in small steps in our school. The other thing that's going around is an 8-1-1 grid. There's three years' worth. We just started to color in the grids three years ago in different colors, and I think if you look at those grids you're going to be amazed at how much it shows that we've implemented and that we've successful in what we started.

We use measurable and objectives. We tried to start small. One of the things that we found was that if we tried to do too much, we didn't get much done. So we said okay, just the little things. In our school newspaper, two of the health educator teams put together wellness tips for families, a little piece on nutrition. We had one day when we concentrated on doing every body's blood pressure — the teachers. We did their blood pressure, we talked about where they could go to get all their tests done. We talked about how wellness is from the neck up, and we had national speakers in for motivation on wellness. But we did that all over the years, and every year we seem to add a little bit more and keep carrying on what we've already done. The goals that we set — we say, okay, if we cannot meet this goal this year, maybe we should break it down and just do a small piece of it and that is what we did. On an action plan we would do something like work with the school cafeteria to provide healthy lunch choices.

Now this year we've added a bulletin board in the cafeteria that's related to school health and foods and what the children are eating, and we're working with the cafeteria staff. We do build on our success. We've gotten quite a bit of recognition, thanks to Eva and the regional associates in our area that are responsible for school health programs. Two years ago, I think it was, we were rated one of the top five schools in New York for health and wellness programming. That gave us a lot of incentive and a boost, and when we had people come and want to hear from us and interview us and write about us, it made us all even more enthusiastic. We do an ongoing need assessment. We do it every year. We used to go to the health program Lakeside, but they discontinued that, unfortunately, three years ago, I think it is now.

What I did then was offer my cottage up in Canada. We'd bring together the team in the summer and we'd go through the same steps and do the action plan at the cottage, where we'd take time to go out in the boat, we'd take time to swim, we'd take time to talk and to have good food. But we'd develop an action plan that we'd then bring back to the school and implement. One of the newest things we've been doing is First Day celebration, making that a place where parents and students are coming to school. This is a national endeavor. We picked it up and linked it with our health and wellness program. Many of the things we've done we've linked with our health and wellness program. We don't invent them, we borrow them. Whatever works. We bring them into our health and wellness program.

Two years ago, we took the entire staff — and you'll see pictures of that — to a place called Beaver Camp. We took them on their Staff Development Day. We did ropes courses, we did trust-building. In the morning we did all those things, and then in the afternoon we met in small groups and we said, okay, what's good about our school? What have you noticed that's improved in the last few years? What do you think we still need to do? And everybody — bus drivers, custodians, support staff, teachers, administrators — they came up with all sorts of things for us to focus on during that year. And we did. We characterized all of the items they came up with. We put in strands and then we worked on them. We made those our goals, our school board goals, our school goals. Every time we needed a goal we'd pull it off of them.

That was two years ago. This year we're taking the entire faculty and staff again to Beaver Camp, and in the morning we'll do some different types of activity. All of those who were too scared to do the ropes course the first time say, "I think I can do it now. I think we can do this." And then in the afternoon we're going to break into groups and we're going to work on character education. And we're going to develop action plans for character education. We're trying to get the community more involved. We told the board that we're trying to get more involved, because we found out that, at first, we didn't have that support from our Board of Education. They were with me when I asked if I could hire a school health coordinator, but I don't think they knew the scope of what I wanted from that school health coordinator and the team. It's like it's an umbrella, a sheer governance of the whole school.

A lot of things go through that school team that relate to what people don't think of normally as health. And if you look at the 8-1-1 grid, there's a lot of things on the 8-1-1 grid that aren't health. They're not about sick children or sick teachers. They're about counseling, they're about character, they're about you name it, it's on there — physical education, a whole healthy body. Faculty and staff at first were very resistant. They thought that I hired the health coordinator to come in and teach their classes, and they could go out and take a coffee break at that time, some of them. And we had to say, no, she's here to teach you how to teach some of those health programs. And that's working now, where the teacher and the health coordinator are a strong team.

A lot of people lack knowledge about regulations or they didn't realize that in New York State, technically on the books, you're supposed to have a health coordinator. They have a school superintendent. Sometimes they assign that position to someone who might not even know they were it. And so that really doesn't do any good. Do you have a school health coordinator? Yes. Well, it's the school nurse. And what does she do? She doesn't do anything there. So we cleaned that up. And then there's also a lack of knowledge, and that's why I think you're here, about the total concept of — we can call it coordinated school health models. But what it is is tentacles that reach every aspect of a school — the students, the staff, the parents, the community. Our newest thing this year is linking with another school. And next week their staff and our staff are coming together to hear about classroom wellness.

What were the obstacles, besides those that we mentioned? We always have resistance to change. And that's not just in a small rural school — I'm sure that's in any size school district that you're in, whether it's a suburban, urban, or whatever. Money — one of the reasons I became a school superintendent was that I was tired of people telling me that were above me that they didn't have any money for something. So when I became school superintendent, I made a point to find the money. The board will let you spend it if you can find it. And we did find it in a lot of other resources — in the grants and in the people in the community. The community didn't really know what coordinated school health and wellness was, either. They didn't realize what we were trying to do. And when the community became more aware, we find we're getting excellent support now.

Negative attitudes and poor morale seem to be something that I inherited when I came into the district. They had been without a contract for a year and a half. They had been through three superintendents in the last three years. They were down. They hadn't changed staff in over five years. They weren't allowed to go to staff development conferences because there wasn't any money, so it tended to be very isolated. The location of the district also adds to the isolation, so what we've been trying to do — and we think we've done it quite successfully in the last six years and we're about to continue — is to reach out. My teachers next week are going to be amazed. They're in a small district where there's two or three teachers per grade level. We've invited a large district where there's seven or eight or nine teachers per grade level. After the motivational speaker in the morning, they're going to meet with those teachers by grade level and share best practices curriculum. That's all part of health, because in everything we do, we say that to raise academic achievement is our ultimate goal.

I think we've overcome a lot of these obstacles just by perseverance — and I know Joycelyn Elders, who I really do like, she's strong and very intense and believes what she says. Presentations by our team — they're willing to go anywhere. They come to the board, they go out in the community, and they'll talk about their programs and their excitement. And when we go to Canada or whatever, when we go to Lakeside, we all get t-shirts that match, and we have a little camaraderie there, team spirit — we try to build that. My health coordinator at first — and I just told her to discontinue it now because she's proven it — did monthly reports to the board on what classes she'd worked with, what she'd done, what types of contacts she'd made. She still does those, but they're for my benefit. But we wanted to make sure the board was involved.

We also went after certain people to be part of the team. If we felt that somebody was sort of a little disbelieving, distrusting, doubting Thomas, we'd invite them to be part of the team. We also sent home information in the school newsletter, as we said. We'd tell them what we were doing. The cooperative partnerships is the newest adventure we're doing, and it is an adventure. I give my comprehensive school health and wellness team one in-service day for sure every year in March. But they also take a portion of our First Day celebration, a portion of our staff development. And we do fun things in order to draw people in and draw them together.

We have now established and implemented curriculum in the pre-kindergarten through the 12th grade. And that curriculum comes with newsletters and whatever, and if you look at any of the curriculums that are out there, anything that's coordinated . If you're going to adopt a curriculum in your school, make sure that there's coordination, that it links from grade to grade.

Grants — there is money out there. We've found it, and I think you're going to hear there's money here too, because Eva will be telling you about it. We also give input on the budget. I'm doing that right now, and this year it's particularly difficult in New York because of 9-11. We essentially have a flat budget, and we're starting to scratch our heads to see if we can be creative to bring in the money we need for health and wellness. Because without healthy students, we might as well forget it. There's no point in even going on. If those kids aren't ready to come to school ready to learn, and their needs aren't taken care of — emotional, physical, whatever — we might as well hang it up. You can teach them all the math and all the calculus and if they get killed in a drunk driving accident when they're 16, or they smoke … We had a boy, we worked with him, worked with him — he didn't stop his chewing and now he has cancer of the jaw. So what is the good of all this education if you're not a healthy individual?

When we had the Lakeside program they had a Student Day, and we would promote health and wellness scholarships for the students to attend. And we would try to get them to go, also. We had some success with that, but unfortunately, Lakeside is discontinued in New York State, and I don't know when it's going to come up again.

If you're going to think about this at all, you need an enthusiastic person, enthusiastic leadership, and you can be the leader. Anyone can be the leader just by creating around him or her an aura of let's try this, let's take the risk, let's take that bold step to help children. Start small. The first time we met, the first, we only had four of us that were really talking about health and what to do. But now I think there are about 20 on my team, and we're a small district. We build the team, we participate, and we encourage the support and involvement. What I've noticed is that this team is very caring of each other, too, and very supportive of each other. So we're accomplishing a lot with a team that's out there working, designing action plans, deciding what to do for children. But they're also nurturing and supporting each other, and I think that's very important.

We're still working on ways to involve the other administrations and develop a partnership, and this is working now. I personally have made presentations to my superintendents in the area. We've encouraged our administrator to go to a health and wellness training, which will take about six days over the course of a year and a half. WE send our health coordinator to management-type lessons and work on how to bring other programs back to the school. I really think that we're making some progress here, but we don't want to stop. When I come to this conference, I get all charged up again. ASCD has always had something for me to pull back and get excited about to take back to the school and to the health and wellness team.

I'd say the action plan is a real tool. If you build a plan, you've got to know who's going to do it, when they're going to do it, and when it's going to be done. Dates — we have an actual format that we used from Lakeside that says: What are we going to do? Who's going to do it? Who's taking responsibility? And by when is it going to be done? And the 8-1-1 grid, we let that go around and I'll get to you. And those are the eight components of health, and I want you all to look at that because I think you're going to be surprised about what's health and what isn't.

Becky Partlow is going to take over now.

PREVIOUS PART

NEXT PART