Student Healty Advisory Council - 12/11/07

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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

 

December 11, 2007

 

The School Health Advisory Council met Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 4:00 pm in room 213 of Lincoln Center. Virginia Mermel presided over the meeting. Attending were, Bette Hunt, Bev McHugh, Bernie Mason, Thomas Harper, Anne Nichols, Robert Roe, Karen Dawson and Dan Gall. Guest Sandy Betise (Sodexho)

 

Introductions

Virginia Mermel welcomed the committee.

 

Approval of Minutes

The minutes from the November 13, 2007 meeting were presented. Bev McHugh moved and Bernie Mason seconded that the minutes be approved. Motion passed unanimously.

 

Updates

Virginia Mermel informed the committee that the School Food and Nutrition bill is back on the Senate floor and they are trying to get it tied in with the agricultural bill.

 

Susan Maier will be working with Troy Zickefoose, the principal at Will James Middle School on getting the Shape Up programs started. Susan Maier, Virginia Mermel and Paul Manning from the YMCA met with Agnes Sample from MSU-B. One of the classes from MSU-B will work with Will James staff and faculty in the Spring to get the Shape Up programs started. Susan Maier is in contact with the new Granite Fitness Center regarding reduced cost memberships for SHAPE UP participants and Paul Manning has offered free YMCA memberships for the 3-month SHAPE UP period.

 

Bette Hunt, General Manager of Sodexho Food Service gave an update on the Client Expectation Meeting held Wed Nov 29th. The top objectives that came from that meeting were ( in order of importance):

• Recycling- alternatives to Styrofoam and beverage container recycling

• Elementary cafeteria focus on food vs. efficiency during lunch service – Kathy Kelker made a visit to Ponderosa Elementary and was very impressed with the atmosphere in the cafeteria and how helpful the GDA’s were with the students Kathy Kelker would like to see that type of atmosphere in all of the elementary cafeterias. It was suggested that it would be good to have customer service training for General Duty Aides.

• The District has chosen to go with an on-line payment option. Parents will be able to access their students account to add money and to see what their student has been purchasing. This service should be available in January.

• Stay the Course.- The School Board is starting to see progress – wants to continue to update equipment, continue to communicate positive progress at the schools, work on a community relations campaign to get parents and students on board wit the menu changes.

• Serving more skim milk and natural peanut butter were also items of interest

 

A detailed discussion of GDA training followed Bette’s presentation, with various ideas put forth by committee members. Virginia will check with Katie Bark of MT Team Nutrition to see if there are materials available for this purpose. If not, she will check with the director of the Career Center to see if students enrolled their can produce a DVD with a short training video. SHAC also needs to determine the cost of training GDA – in addition to the cost of the training itself, funds must be allotted to pay aids for attending training.

 

 

Development of Guidelines For Fundraising

The USDA requires that schools reduce the amount of sweet and snack foods sold for fund raising.

● School fundraising expectations and events are set well ahead of time. So SHAC needs to act now in order to influence fund raising practices next year

● Part of the over arching SHAC mandate is to reign in some of the things that are

sold at fundraising and try to bring the nutritional quality closer to the ideal nutritional qualities modeled through the school lunch program. There are two ways to go about this

 

1. All foods sold for fundraising could be made to meet the nutritional guidelines that the USDA specifies for a type A meal.

2. Or there needs to be a balance of items sold for fund raising so that cookies, candies or other sweets are only a small portion of all fund raising sales.

 

●Anne Nichols, RN and SHAC chair of the Billings Catholic Schools shared her experience in trying to change fund raising. Found students are especially resistant because they see fund raisers like bake sales as being free of cost to set up (they overlook the fact parents purchase ingredients and make bakery items for sale). Students also said they believed all fund raising would stop if sweets and snakes can’t be sold. Anne and her committee decided to begin by identifying and reviewing all fund raising efforts undertaken through the 4 Catholic school campuses so an estimate of funding needs as well as the types of items sold. Education and communication of parents, students, and school staff need to take place regarding this issue.

 

●Virginia said that while meeting with the SD-2 HS principals, she learned that planned fund raisers are not the biggest problem, it’s the impromptu fund raisers that teachers undertake that tend to feature soft drinks, candy, bakery items and other snack foods. And in fact, several teachers have told her that they see fund raising infractions going on all the time, but these are usually undertaken to provide funding for essential elements of curriculum. A case in point, Consumer Sci teachers at Senior High sell soft drinks and candy to raise money to buy food to cook during class projects because the food budget for this class has not increased in 10 years.

 

● The SHAC members felt all school related fundraisers on a given campus should go through one source or a committee. Virginia will contact Thomas Harper to see if she could get an idea about the fundraising that is going on in the high schools. The SHAC also began listing alternative fund raising ideas such as selling spirit wear, boxes of mixed fruit, and other healthy alternatives or holding events like car washes, fitness walks, etc. Karen Dawson advocated SHAC investigate a non-event fund raiser (like a silent tea) to be sponsored by each school. It has numerous advantages: 100% of donation would go to fund raising goal. Parents would spend less in the long run, and it would be easy to deduct donation from taxes, and the volunteer work that goes into producing fund raisers could go to other needs the school has. Need to figure out a formula for dividing collected funds fairly amongst school programs that currently hold their own fund raisers.

 

Upcoming Meetings

Tuesday January 8, 2007 - 4:00-6:00 P.M. Room 213 Lincoln Center.

 

 

Respectfully submitted:

 

__________________________

Virginia Mermel, Chair

____________________

Cindy Curnow, Recorder