School District Leadership for Active Living and Healthy Eating

White Bear Lake Area Schools, Minnesota

Ted Blaesing, superintendent

For many years we have been blessed with several superstar teachers in physical education who are not only passionate about helping kids understand what they should do about their fitness, but also why they need to be concerned.

We began our change crusade to meet content requirements within our state’s graduation requirements. As we implemented a greater variety of fitness measures, especially in the cardiovascular category, we found high numbers of students who were completing their assessments at extremely unhealthy levels. We even had many varsity letter athletes who could not complete these fitness measurements. At the same time, the media was bombarding us with information about obesity in our children.

It was obvious that we had to enhance physical activity time as much as possible. We didn’t give up curricula; we scaled down some activities and enhanced others to offer more time for heart and lung activity. We really did not compromise anything; we simply organized our unit and daily plans differently.

We have seen small physical changes and larger social changes, and we think that — psychologically — students see themselves more positively. Our biggest dilemma is time. Time is expensive. For this to work progressively, students need to have a longer period of activity everyday, which doesn’t fit into the current school schedule and the national push for academic testing. So for now, we are maintaining what we have and trying to add extras. For example, many of us have decided to model healthy behaviors in the community.

We have made incremental changes by eliminating high-calorie beverages in the middle schools and substituting sugar-free flavored drinks with calorie counts ranging from 0 to 100. Snack offerings were changed to those with six grams of fat or less, such as baked chips, low-fat ice cream, fresh fruit cereal bars, and one-ounce cookies, in addition to cheese, crackers and yogurt-covered raisins.

These changes were made in part because of the national- and statelevel focus on student nutrition and in part due to the concerns of two school board members who had a high interest in this topic. The dilemma with food service is the need to manage the program so it at least breaks even financially and our desire to encourage more healthy choices for kids.

Prince Edward County Public Schools, Virginia

Margaret Blackmon, superintendent

We are a rural school division of 357 square miles in south central Virginia. Our student body — 2,740 students in pre-K-12 — is 59 percent African American, 40 percent Caucasian and 1 percent other nationalities. Sixty-five percent of our students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

Our initiative on healthy food came from a school board member who is part of a healthy children committee that includes the local hospital and health department. The committee analyzed the foods and beverages in our vending machines and did a presentation to the school board. When one nurse held up a sticky bun sold in our snack machines and explained that it had 600 calories, almost everyone in the room gasped.