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Student Health Advisory Council 5/13/2008


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PROCEEDINGS OF THE SCHOOL HEALTH ADVISORY COUNCIL

School District No. 2, Yellowstone County

High School District No. 2, Yellowstone County

Billings, Montana

 

May 13, 2008

 

The School Health Advisory Council met Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 4:00 pm in room 213 of Lincoln Center. Virginia Mermel presided over the meeting. Attending were, Bette Hunt, Robert Roe, Paul Manning, Kay Schwartz, Ann Guthals, Anne Nichols, Lainey Keene, Jen Staton, Thomas Harper.

 

Introductions

Virginia Mermel welcomed the committee.

 

Approval of Minutes

The minutes from the February and April 2008 meetings meeting were presented. Bette Hunt moved and Karen Dawson seconded that the minutes be approved. Motion passed unanimously.

 

Updates

Virginia Mermel informed the committee that the farm bill had passed had passed and been vetoed by President Bush, but as of 2 PM eastern time this after noon, it appeared there would be enough votes to override the veto. The farm bill has provisions that would affect what type of crops that will be subsidized and thus what type of surplus commodities would be available to schools and it also contains an important increase in food stamp dollars. The rapidly escalating cost of living has pushed many Billings families into poverty so more food stamp dollars are an important stopgap.

 

Virginia reported that she and SHAC member Paul Manning had met with professors from MSUB and members of the Yellowstone City County Health Department to determine if they could jointly submit a grant to the Robert Woods Johnson foundation to study the impact of some of our wellness policies on school wellness programs and practices, but it was determined that we had too few children enrolled in the after school program to generate legitimate data. The potential grant writing committee agreed to work together on future projects.

 

Virginia reported that the Fund Raising Guidelines that Ann Guthals was kind enough to edit and reorganize had received 10 yes votes, no abstentions or no votes. This policy, like the Concession Stand Food Sales Policy passed last month will go into effect on July 1, 2008.

Thomas Harper said he had invited Virginia to present these latest guidelines to the school board on Monday, May 19th. He added that he had agreed that these policies would be distributed to al SD-2 teachers, staff and administrators by mass email in August.

 

Virginia said a handout explaining the SHAC’s mission and guidelines would be distributed to parents in September at back-to-school night events.

 

 

 

New Business

 

Virginia also reported that she was working with the local health department on a NIH sponsored health program known as We Can. As part of this initiative, the health dept staff will be helping out with local health initiatives. They have agreed to help make rethink your drink displays for back to school night so parents can see first hand how much added sugar is in common vending machine drinks.

 

Kay Schwartz discussed a $1000 mini-grant for increasing fruit and vegetable intake that she would like to go after on behalf of her health careers’ students and asked for help developing it. Virginia promised to help write the grant. Which is due by June 6th.

 

Virginia said that she would take point on finishing up the SHAC policy impact assessment for the 2007-2008 school year. The goal of this exercise is to determine to what extent the nutrition and physical activity recommendations put forth by SHAC last May were put into practice this school year. Bette Hunt will provide data on food sales trends and nutrition. Shape Up MT staff will provided data on the Fid Kids and Shape Up team project. Virginia will design a survey to assess other recommendations. Thomas Harper offered to put the survey on Survey Monkey.

 

Goals for next year: Review assessment survey and determine what types of policy changes or support may be necessary to get more corporation within schools.

 

 

 

Upcoming Meetings

The next official meeting of the SHAC will be Tuesday September 9, 2008 - 4:00-6:00 P.M. Room 213 Lincoln Center.

 

 

Respectfully submitted:

 

__________________________

Virginia Mermel, Chair

____________________

Cindy Curnow, Recorder

 

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