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NORTH MANCHESTER - While many schools in Indiana will be working until the June 30 deadline to construct a health and wellness policy, Manchester Community Schools already has one in place.
Tuesday night at their meeting, the Manchester Community Schools Board of Trustees approved a health and wellness policy for the school corporation. The policy comes at the perfect time since the Indiana House gave final approval to a bill that requires schools to offer healthier food choices in vending machines Monday.
The bill requires half of the foods in school vending machines, include healthier options such as water, fruit and baked potato chips. Also, schools must provide physical activities and create an advisory council as part of the bill.
Last spring, Manchester Community Schools nurse M.A. Rager-Hire began working with a group of teachers and administrators from the school corporation to develop a policy to improve the overall health of students at Manchester Community Schools.
The policy approved Tuesday night lays out guidelines for improving overall nutrition at Manchester Community Schools.
According to the approved policy, "Schools and families together have a duty to prevent unnecessary injury, disease and chronic health conditions that can lead to disability or early death. ... Health and success in school are interrelated. Schools cannot achieve their primary mission of education if students and staff are not healthy and fit physically, mentally and socially."
The goal of the policy is to help each school in the corporation be safe and healthy for children and to teach students to become "health literate" so they can make better choices. The policy encourages schools to encourage healthy lifestyles and share information about nutrition and health and social services.
Manchester Community Schools will use the Indiana Academic Standards for Health Education to teach nutrition at all levels. The policy also stresses the importance of educating students and parents beginning at the elementary school level.
Along with nutritional education, the policy also stresses the importance of physical activity at each grade level.
Rager-Hire also is working closely with food preparation and planning staff to improve the overall healthiness of food served at all buildings in the corporation.
According to the policy, "Manchester Community Schools strongly encourages the sale or distribution of nutrient-dense foods for all school functions and activities. ... In an effort to support the sale or distribution of nutrient-dense foods, MCS has adopted standards for the sale of food, beverage and candy on school grounds."
The school already has started serving wheat buns with sandwiches and wheat crusts on some pizzas. More sugar-free sodas are available in vending machines.
Unfortunately, the healthy switch is a difficult transition. Many healthy foods are expensive and not available as readily in large quantities for schools.
"We continuously evaluate products for taste and cost effectiveness," said Hire. "We are offering more healthy choices in vending machines."
To improve nutrition in classrooms, teachers will be encouraged to give non-food items as rewards and incentives for hard work. Teachers who choose to use food rewards will be encouraged to choose healthy foods as prizes.
The policy also sets up eight components of the school's health program: school environment; health education curriculum; physical education curriculum; nutrition services program; health services program; counseling, psychological and social services program; family and community involvement activities; and staff health promotion program.
Using the eight components, the school system hopes to encourage good health for students of all ages.
