Welcome to the Richland Parish School Board

Wellness Plan

FILE:  JGB
Cf:  EE

 

SCHOOL WELLNESS

The Richland Parish School Board recognizes that schools should play a vital role in promoting student health, preventing childhood obesity, and combating problems associated with poor nutrition and physical inactivity.  The School Board shall promote a healthy school environment by supporting and emphasizing student wellness, good nutrition, and regular physical activity and making these an integral part of the total learning environment. 

 

Schools have a responsibility to help students learn, establish, and maintain patterns of nutrition and physical activity that facilitate a healthy environment.  Well-planned and effectively implemented school nutrition and fitness programs serve to enhance a student’s overall health, as well as their behavior and academic achievement.  The School Board shall require that all foods made available on school campuses should offer children nutritious choices, and physical activity should be incorporated into the school day as often as possible.

 

The Richland Parish School Board shall develop, implement, and maintain a comprehensive plan to encourage healthy eating and physical activity in all public schools of Richland Parish.  The plan shall make effective use of school and community resources and equitably serve the needs and interests of all schools and staff.

 

SPECIFIC WELLNESS GOALS

Nutrition Education

 

The school district will:

1. Promote and implement nutrition education that promotes lifelong healthful eating practices.
2. Use lessons that are age-appropriate, with behaviorally focused content that is developmentally appropriate and culturally relevant.
3. Use lessons that are sequential and are correlated with standards, benchmarks, and grade level expectations.
4. Provide hands-on activities that are fun.
5. Provide repeated opportunities for students to taste foods that are low in fat, sodium and added sugars and high in vitamins, minerals and fiber.
6. Focus on positive aspects of healthful eating behaviors.
7. Promote social learning techniques such as role modeling, providing incentives, developing social resistance skills, overcoming barriers to behavioral changes and goal setting.

 

Physical Activity

 

The school district will:

1. Promote and implement quality physical education programs that emphasize and promote participation in lifelong physical activities and reaching a health enhancing level of physical fitness among all students.
2. Provide students in grades K-8 with a minimum of 150 minutes per week of health and physical education.
3. Ensure that students in grades K-8 participate in planned, organized, moderate to vigorous physical activity for a minimum of 30 minutes each school day.
4. Strive toward having qualified, certified physical education teachers guide physical activity instruction in all elementary grades as well as in middle and high school physical education classes.
5. Provide staff development on standards implementation for physical education instructors.

 

Other School-Based Activities

 

The school district will:

1. Offer classroom health education that complements physical education by reinforcing the knowledge and self-management skills needed to maintain a physically active lifestyle and to reduce time spent on sedentary activities;
2. Recognize that daily physical activity is essential to student welfare and academic performance.
3. Encourage physical activity during recess for elementary students, intramural programs, integration in the academic curriculum, and clubs, as well as in physical education programs.
4. Encourage parents and guardians to support students’ participation in physical activities, to be physically active role-models, and to include physical activities in family plans.
5. Provide parents a list of foods that meet the Board’s snack standards and ideas for health celebrations/parties, rewards and fund-raising activities.
6. Encourage school staff to participate in physical activities to serve as role models.
7. Support community-based physical activity programs.

Nutrition Guidelines

Student’s lifelong eating habits are greatly influenced by the types of foods and beverages available in their daily environment.  In addition to ensuring that reimbursable school meals meet all requirements of the Nutritional School Lunch Program outlined in federal and state regulations, the School Board shall develop and maintain specific nutritional guidelines to address all food and beverages sold or served to students, including those items made available to students outside of the school meal programs.

 

MONITORING AND POLICY REVIEW

Monitoring

The Superintendent or his/her designee shall be responsible for assuring compliance with established district-wide nutrition and physical activity wellness policies.  In each school, the principal or designee will ensure compliance with those policies in his/her school and will report on the school’s compliance to the Superintendent or his/her designee.

School food service staff, at the school or district level, shall assess compliance with nutrition policies within school food service areas and report on this matter to the Superintendent (or if done at the school level, to the school principal). 

The Superintendent or his/her designee shall develop a summary report at least annually on compliance with the district’s established nutrition and physical activity wellness policies, based on input from schools within the district.  The report will be provided to the School Board and also distributed to the schools, parent/teacher organizations, school principals, and school health services personnel throughout the parish.

Policy Review

To help with the initial development of the district’s wellness policies, each public school in Richland Parish shall conduct a baseline assessment of the school’s existing nutrition and physical activity environments and policies.  The results of these school-by-school assessments shall be compiled at the district level to identify and prioritize needs.

 

Assessments will be repeated every three (3) years to help review policy compliance, assess progress, and determine areas in need of improvement.  As part of that review, the School Board and staff shall review all nutrition and physical activity policies; provision of an environment that supports healthy eating and physical activity; and nutrition and physical education policies and program elements.  The School Board and individual schools within the district will, as necessary, revise the wellness policies and develop work plans to facilitate their implementation.

 

New Policy:  October, 2006

Revised:  February 9, 2010

 

 

Ref:     PL 108-265 (Section 204, Child Nutrition and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Reauthorization Act of 2004)

42 USC 1751 (Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act)

42 USC 1771 (Child Nutrition Act of 1966)

7 CFR 210 (National School Lunch Program)

7 CFR 220 (School Breakfast Program)

La. Rev. Stat. Ann.  §17:17.1, 17:197.1

Louisiana Food and Nutrition Programs, Policies of Operation, Bulletin 1196, Louisiana Department of Education

Board minutes, 10-10-06, 2-9-10

 

Richland Parish School Board

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