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Illinois School Board Journal
July/August 2007
Linda Dawson is IASB director of editorial services and Journal editor. She also is co-chair of Action for Healthy Kids-Illinois and serves as IASB's representative on the Governor's Wellness Policy Task Force.
This month marks the first anniversary since school districts in Illinois were required, by law, to adopt local wellness policies. Compared to most birthdays — and especially first birthdays — this one passed with little fanfare.
And it probably was not celebrated with cupcakes — at least not at most schools!
Whether cupcake bans, new nutrition standards and increased emphasis on physical fitness in PE classes will have an effect on the problem of childhood obesity remains to be seen. But districts now are required, by federal and state law, to have wellness policies in place and to be working toward a healthier school environment.
Because this is a policy-level issue, local wellness is a board-level issue. Three years ago, even before the state legislation was adopted, The Illinois School Board Journal encouraged districts to begin to have conversations with their communities in its "Weighing Healthier Options" series (March/April through September/October 2004).
Most districts were not at the talking stage then. Most were so focused on implementing new learning strategies to meet the relatively new No Child Left Behind Act that wellness issues were not on their radar.
In 2004:
Where we are now
In 2007, after a year with wellness policies in place, many schools and districts are working hard to make either subtle or wholesale changes in their cafeteria and vending operations, nutrition curricula and physical education programs. But as with other mandates, some have adopted policies with little thought as to what should happen next.
In August 2006, AFHK collected a national sample and reported that just 54 percent of the 112 local wellness policies examined met all of the minimum requirements of the federal policy guidelines.
IASB Policy Services, along with Illinois Nutrition Education and Training, distributed sample policies to districts in late winter and early spring 2006 before the policies needed to be in place last July.
Deborah Rees, supervisor with the Illinois NET program, said two of the concerns she heard voiced at recent regional wellness policy trainings was that school boards adopted a general policy with little or no input from staff, parents and children, and that boards with general policies have done little or no work on administrative procedures that would implement those policies.
The issue of local wellness policies is a great opportunity to think about the school board's role as policy-makers, according Cathy Talbert, IASB associate executive director for policy services. When discussing policy, her department talks to boards about focusing on the ends they want to achieve: what benefits the board wants the district to deliver to whom and at what cost.
"The board should consider what benefits it wants for the students, staff and others in terms of their overall health and well-being," she said. That conversation might include who operates the cafeteria and the availability of competitive foods, as well as an overall picture of the nutrition, health and physical education curriculum offered and adequate facilities that will accommodate all of those "benefits."
"If the board focuses its policy on what it wants the benefits to be and aligns its budget priorities with policy," Talbert said, "then the biggest portion of the board's work is done."
What remains, she said, is to monitor the progress and costs of those benefits. The actual work of developing procedures to implement the policy as well as the day-to-day tasks of seeing that the work is done should be left to staff, as directed by the superintendent.
"If, in its monitoring role as with any other policy area, the board sees that there has been no progress toward that big picture of school wellness," Talbert said, "then it's time to go back and see if the policy, which conveyed the board's intentions, was properly understood and implemented by the superintendent."
The board holds the superintendent responsible for implementation. The district policy does not need to spell out the details, but it does need to convey a clear picture of its expectations and the directive that the superintendent and staff, the "front line," will develop the necessary steps to arrive at that picture.
Front line experts
School food service personnel are on the front lines, both in the fight against childhood overweight and obesity, as well as the everyday business of making good financial decisions for cafeteria programs.
When Jeannine Wheeler was interviewed for the "Weighing Healthier Options" series in 2004, she was president of the Illinois School Food Service Association (now known as the Illinois School Nutrition Association) and food service director in Quincy SD 172. While she was working for healthier options in her cafeterias, she recognized two important facts: students often are misinformed about nutrition, and the bottom line in the lunch line is whether the students will eat what is offered.
She routinely saw young girls who thought being on a diet consisted of drinking a diet soda with French fries for lunch … or not eating at all. And she was dismayed that many children had no idea what some healthy foods taste like, such as fresh spinach.
Now, as food service director for Champaign CUSD 4, she's still working to get healthier items on the menu. But her good intentions often are met with physical challenges.
With 19 school sites and just two production kitchens, keeping the hot food hot and the cold food cold is a daily struggle in itself. Fresh ingredients can require additional preparation time, which means staff must plan ahead and start earlier in the morning. Plus, she said, space is limited to what will fit in the carts for each site.
"Some schools have no kitchen whatsoever," Wheeler said, "and that means no refrigeration to store extra produce."
But even though she's encountered distribution problems, parental involvement in her new, very college-oriented community has been a plus.
"Many parents in the Champaign area are very vocal about healthier choices," she said. The district even has a school food service advisory group with a mission of exploring healthier options and seeing how they will fit into the satellite food service operation. They have visited several kitchens and observed meal times.
The district also is exploring partnership opportunities with the University of Illinois and other groups to see if any grant or research money would allow them to study plate waste, student food preferences and additional nutrition education.
Although she sees wellness policies as having made some more aware of a need to change, she also recognizes that much of the work will need to be done with the same or less funding, especially when eating healthier can drive the cost up by at least five or 10 cents per plate.
Cheryl Lawrence of Consolidated SD 158, which serves the community of Huntley and portions of Lake in the Hills, Algonquin, Union and Lakewood, is the current president of ISNA. Even though her Pre-K-12 district is part of a food cooperative in northern Illinois, she said, the costs to provide food service seem to rise each day just like the cost of gasoline.
While she and her staff try to offer students more fruits and vegetables, it can be difficult, she said, when fresh strawberries cost $25 for a flat (about 32 cups of whole berries).
Lawrence said she has seen a gradual increase in meal participation in her district this year, partly because of a big educational push in the middle school and high school cafeterias. Their "What a Deal — Create A Meal" program showed students how they can get better nutrition for a lesser price by purchasing a cafeteria meal instead of a number of a la carte items.
While her district made a number of food preparation changes at the beginning year — changing to 1 percent milk, low-fat salad dressings and reducing the amount of fat in (and size of) baked goods — she said they're still fielding complaints from students about not getting "the big chocolate chip cookies" that were their favorites.
Is healthier costlier?
Anyone who frequents local grocery stores and tries to eat healthy amounts of fresh produce and lean meat will confirm that it costs more to eat healthy. Low-fat products, in general, are more expensive than their higher-fat counterparts. Whole-grain breads cost more than a generic loaf of white bread. And a pound of 73 percent lean beef can be $2 a pound cheaper than a 96 percent lean package.
But when it comes to cafeteria programs, which historically are not big money-makers, at least one recent study found that food service revenues can increase even after stricter nutrition standards are implemented.
"Dollars and Sense: The Financial Impact of Selling Healthier School Foods," released this spring by the University of California-Berkeley, looked at the possible impact of legislation that would have regulated the sale of all competitive foods and beverages sold to elementary and middle school students in California. The legislation, known as SB19, was never implemented because of "a funding contingency," the report said. But the nutrition standards that SB19 contained were modified and incorporated into new legislation that went into effect July 1. The new legislation also addresses nutrition issues at the high school level.
"Faced with competition from venues such as vending machines, student stores and students going off campus to buy foods and beverages during the school day, many food service departments have felt it necessary to sell popular, but nutritionally poor, a la carte items in addition to complete meals," the report said. While California schools complained the new standards would make food service operations less profitable, the report concluded that most schools didn't have adequate systems in place to track the financial impact.
"Many schools had little idea how much they were making from competitive food and beverage sales, and rarely were revenues adjusted for student attendance," the report said, "therefore making it difficult to distinguish the impact of the regulations from the impact of fluctuations in student enrollment."
Data collected for the study at 15 California middle schools and five high schools showed that 18 of the 20 showed an increase of more than 5 percent in meal revenues, which was attributed to students purchasing more meals when competitive foods were not as available.
In order to improve the school meal program, "Dollars and Sense" recommended that schools:
The report also concluded that school food service should get additional assistance and revenue "to support the preparation and promotion of fresh, appealing and nutritious meals" and that groups outside of food service "should develop fund-raising strategies that do not involve the sale of foods and beverages so as to avoid competition with the meal program."
In addition to making those recommendations and conclusions, the report mentioned specific challenges that districts might face in making the changes. Among those were open campus policies, short meal periods, reliance on high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods to support student programs and existing beverage contracts.
Vending issues
Three years ago, Illini Central High School in Mason City was one of the first schools to try milk vending. Patrick Martin, current principal, was in Lexington then, but he can confirm that milk vending is still a popular option at Illini Central. And he also confirms that the school still maintains its Pepsi vending contract as well.
As with most schools, vending machines are shut off at Illini Central during the day, Martin said, adding that no matter how good the intentions and interventions are at school, "I notice students go before school and get the sodas they want."
Jason Leahy, former Illini Central principal who brought milk vending into that high school, is now executive director of the Illinois Principals Association. In his current position, he sees vending and nutrition as important issues for schools, but comes at the issue now from a wider perspective.
"Obviously it's important and we need to be talking about (nutrition issues)," Leahy said, "especially in light of pending diabetes legislation." But, he added, principals just like school boards must be concerned about any dictates that come from the state.
"Local control is critical," he said, and some issues — like children's nutrition and wellness — are bigger than schools can handle alone. He calculated that during the course of an entire year — not just the academic year — schools have children less than 20 percent of their waking hours, allowing for eight hours of sleep a night. "The other 80 percent of the time," he said, "they are with their parents," or someone else designated by their parents as a caregiver.
While everyone looks to schools to take the lead, parents are the first teachers and exert the greatest control over what their children have to eat or are allowed to purchase, either in a cafeteria line or from a vending machine.
Because many schools are dependent on vending money to fund school services, trying to navigate through those contract issues can become a moral dilemma, according to Leahy.
While at Highland (CUSD 5) High School, a principalship Leahy held between Illini Central and coming to IPA in 2006, the district renegotiated its vending contract. At that time, Leahy said, he was impressed with the companies for getting together and talking about the district's concerns. The companies themselves decided to be committed to the issue of student wellness, and he sees that as an important first step.
On their own, vendors divided what they would offer by grade level: only 100 percent juice and water in elementary schools; added some soda products for middle schools; and offered a 50/50 split between soda products versus juice and water at the high school.
Also ahead of the curve
In 2004, Mundelein CHSD 120 also was ahead of most districts in vending issues and had banned carbonated soft drinks and junk food in its machines. Since then, the district has "pretty much stayed the course," according to John Ahlgrim, deputy superintendent/principal, although he believes that the wellness policy mandate helped the district formalize its focus on wellness.
"Our physical education and health curricula have always emphasized physical fitness and healthy habits," he said, "but the changes we implemented a few years ago certainly put us ahead of the curve. We have outstanding exercise facilities for young people, and we have created some great fitness-based activities in PE to provide some flavor to the exercise component."
One change the district implemented was to "marry" its family and consumer science foods/cooking class into its wellness curriculum to create a "Foods and Fitness" curriculum. "The natural connection between nutrition in cooking, exercise and dietary choices has been a great new class," he said.
He credited the district's food service provider, Sodexho, with being conscientious about food offerings even before the policy mandate, "so the policy simply helped to provide backing for an already great program."
The district rarely gets questions about its early decision to eliminate sodas and unhealthy snacks from its vending operations. "Most people seem to realize the huge amounts of soda that young people consume is not a good plan," he said.
In retrospect, however, he believes their plan might have been even more effective if the district had taken a bit more time to educate the student body about the changes.
"I'm convinced that they indeed need to be a part of the problem-solving process," Ahlgrim said. "Some of the creative adjustments we made were the result of listening to student feedback on how to accomplish the goals of a successful wellness plan and still allow for degrees of choice for individuals."
At the elementary level
Oak Park ESD 97 also was in the forefront of wellness issues, according to Sandra Noel, physical education teacher at Hatch Elementary School, and Sheila Carter, the school's principal. But they believe that adoption of the district's wellness policy validated what their school had been doing since 2003.
"Everyone has now received a clear message that health and wellness are important for learning," Carter said, "and schools need to take an active role in communicating what a healthy lifestyle looks like."
Noel has been instrumental the past four years in distributing information on a healthy school environment from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Healthy Schools Summit sponsored by Action for Healthy Kids. Components of the total school wellness picture include an experiential nutrition curriculum, meals, celebrations, fund-raisers, health and fitness events, community and teacher education, and a lifestyle PE curriculum.
Celebrations and fund-raisers at Hatch got a healthy makeover following a community belief that students should profit in all ways from these activities, including their health. A letter to parents and guardians recognizes that a child's birthday is a special event. But it also says if they want to send something for a class party, it should be a non-food item, such as a pencil, a bookmark, stickers or temporary tattoos, among other options.
On the district level, a partnership has been formed with Seven Generations Ahead, a not-for-profit organization in Oak Park that is dedicated to promoting a clean environment and human health. Among its many programs, SGA conducts community education seminars, which included a wellness-best practice forum offered in Chicago and the suburbs to give an overview of what districts and individual schools are doing to help students live a healthy life.
But despite these coordinated efforts, Carter said it still can be difficult to get out the message about wellness. "Although there are many ways of communicating, messages do not always get to all the stakeholders and many adults are not aware of the new wellness policy, and our school policies," she added.
Even though many of the practices were in place at Hatch and in District 97 before the wellness policy was mandated, "we are doing these things because it is the right thing to do," Carter said.
Where do we go from here?
While the number of policies and programs to fight childhood obesity seem to be growing, a 2006 study from the Institute of Medicine ("Progress in Preventing Childhood Obesity: How Do We Measure Up?") sees current interventions as "fragmented and small-scale."
In its general recommendations, the 13-member committee of health and nutrition experts called for:
While the committee offered more "next steps" directed toward government, industry and the media than it did for schools, the two critical areas that it called for at all levels of education were a bolstering of physical education and activity requirements, and an admonition for federal and state government to provide the funding to make those changes possible.
Next steps in Illinois also have included work by the Governor's Wellness Policy Task Force.
When the Illinois School Code was amended to include the requirement for local wellness policies, the General Assembly also included language that established a task force of representatives from 19 organizations and/or agencies with an interest in school policy and children's nutrition and physical activity. The task force was charged during its first year to look at barriers to implementing wellness policies, followed by a year to work on nutrition standards and a year to evaluate progress on implementation.
In the task force's first report to the governor, presented January 1, 2006, three of the five major barriers identified as impeding implementation involved either time or money: other priorities (primarily NCLB); lack of coordinated team approach; resources (time, staff, money and facilities); lack of awareness of the issue; and loss of revenue streams (vending contracts).
The nutrition standards, presented January 1, 2007, went beyond the Part 305 rules discussed earlier in this article, limiting sizes and portions as well as discussing both cafeteria operations and competitive foods at all levels in a district. The Part 305 rules apply only to students younger than ninth grade.
However, as of this writing, the Illinois State Board has yet to make any recommendations or implement any additional rules following the task force report.
The task force currently is reviewing data collected from 10 districts to have a basis for its evaluation report, which is due January 1, 2008.
Two additional studies to determine how Illinois school districts are doing on wellness policy implementation are underway and should have results ready to present by this year's Joint Annual Conference in Chicago. The Illinois NET program has surveyed principals and the Illinois Department of Public Health has surveyed physical education teachers through the Illinois Association for Healthy, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (IAPHERD).
When the results of the three surveys are compared after the first of the year, Illinois should have a better picture of where schools are with wellness policy implementation.
References
"Dollars and Sense: The Financial Impact of Selling Healthier School Foods," Center for Weight & Health, University of California, Berkeley, March 2007
"Progress in Preventing Childhood Obesity: How Do We Measure Up?" Institute of Medicine, September 2006