Healthy bodies make healthy minds, schools say

One idea is to get the pupils moving during morning announcements.

By DENISE DICK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

BOARDMAN — Healthy pupils make better pupils.

That’s one reason a team of teachers and staff from Boardman elementary and middle schools wants to encourage physical activity and healthy food choices for their pupils.

“There’s a lot of research showing that healthy students perform better in school,” said Itala Landers. She’s one of the members of a schools committee who recently attended the annual Coordinated School Health Conference at Salt Fork State Park Lodge, near Cambridge.

Landers is a fifth- and sixth-grade health teacher at Glenwood Middle School.

Superintendent Frank Lazzeri said that one emphasis is for kindergarten through eighth-grade teachers to get their pupils moving during morning announcements.

Committee members hope that activity can be squeezed in two to three days per week, Landers said.

“Boardman elementary and middle schools will include 11⁄2 minutes of physical activity during morning announcements as prescribed in the board-approved wellness policy,” she said.

Wellness policy

The wellness policy was borne out of a federal law requiring school districts that participate in free and reduced lunch programs to establish a school wellness plan by the start of the 2006 school year. Congress recognized the critical role schools play in promoting student health, preventing childhood obesity and combating problems associated with poor nutrition and physical inactivity.

The type of physical activity during the announcements isn’t specific. Committee members hope volunteers from the community will provide videos of different activities that pupils may execute safely in the classroom space available.

“I want to encourage a positive reaction from the majority of the student body,” Landers said.

The initiative also includes an emphasis on healthy beverage consumption.

Through the school district’s wellness policy, adopted in May 2006 and implemented in stages, all pop has been removed from student-accessible vending machines. It’s been replaced with water and fruit juices, Landers said.

Information will be sent to parents, asking them not to pack pop in their children’s lunches. It will be a request, not a requirement, she said.

Action plans

The committee began attending the health conferences in 2001. At the conferences, they develop an action plan to address nutrition, physical activity, tobacco use, injury, drugs⁄alcohol, or disease prevention and work through the year to implement that plan.

Some of the committee’s accomplishments over the years include a five-a-day fruit and vegetables program at the elementary school level and staff health screenings and blood pressure monitoring.

It all sounds good to Cherie Covan, first vice president of the PTO at West Boulevard Elementary. “I think that’s a great idea,” she said.

The mother of four — one high school sophomore, a sixth-grader and twin girls going into first grade — said that children need to be more active.

“We don’t drink soda at our house,” Covan said. “I don’t like it, and it’s not good for them. It’s really a special occasion thing. I think no soda in school is a good idea.”

Milk is offered in the cafeteria, with the high school and middle school snack lines offering fruit juice and water.

“During the school day, we want to create an environment that offers nutritious food choices,” Landers said.

Modeled after Springfield

Lazzeri said the program is patterned after that of Springfield’s New Middletown Elementary where it’s been in place since 2000.

It started there as part of an effort to bolster pupil achievement, said Principal Tom Yazvac. “We’re always trying to improve our test scores,” he said.

In that pursuit, representatives from the school attended the healthy school conference that touted the benefits of exercise and good nutrition on pupil learning. They decided to give it a try.

“We have 15 to 20 minutes of exercise every morning and we have breakfast each day,” the principal said.

He said the report card scores have demonstrated the benefits. Improved attendance and fewer discipline problems also show that it’s working.

One second-grade teacher who used to answer questions about “When’s lunch?” multiple times during morning class, no longer hears that refrain since the introduction of breakfast at school, the principal said.

Other schools are implementing similar ideas.

Other area schools

Canfield Superintendent Dante Zambrini said his district implemented food choices that are low fat and have less sugar, and offered more fresh fruit as part of its wellness policy. Carbonated beverages were never available in machines to which pupils had access, he said.

The district also is working on a plan to encourage physical activity that pupils can participate in throughout their lives, such as walking. That idea, being developed with the district’s health and physical education departments, also will emphasize the importance of stretching before and after physical activity, Zambrini said.

At Poland schools, Donna Cartwright, food services director, said she eliminated salty snacks and snacks that get more than 30 percent of their calories from fat from the options available to pupils in kindergarten through eighth grade. The school also doesn’t sell any carbonated beverages although some vending machines, only accessible after school, still have them.

At the high school, students have options for baked snack foods such as potato chips or cheese curls in the snack line and a breakfast line offering water, juice, fresh fruit and low-fat options will be implemented this year.

Other healthy choices district-wide include white⁄wheat bread that provides more fiber but looks like white bread. When the cafeteria serves rice dishes, it’s a 50-50 mix of white and brown rice, Cartwright said.

At Austintown

At Austintown, the district is working with the vendors who fill vending machines at the school to provide more healthy choices, like water, fruit juice and low-sugar energy drinks, said Superintendent Doug Heuer. The machines, at the high school and middle schools, are only available to pupils before and after school, not during the school day, the superintendent said.

The district also has a partnership with Forum Health and last year received a grant to provide a physical evaluation of eighth-graders.

The district hopes to eventually provide screenings of young pupils in kindergarten or first grade. The pupils would also be screened in middle school and high school to track their progress, Heuer said. The screenings would evaluate the students’ overall fitness levels.

“We’re working with our health and physical education teachers, to work in the curriculum, a whole wellness concept,” he said.

It would emphasize the importance of a good diet and regular exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle. Austintown also plans professional development sessions for staff focused on good health.

“A healthy body and a healthy mind go hand in hand, and that’s true not just for students but for adults as well,” Heuer said.