Yesterday I had the opportunity to facilitate the first of three workshops with the three elementary schools in Coos Bay as well as the intermediate school (again- yippee!). A team of us wrote a grant to support Coos Bay in implementing their district wide wellness policy and yesterday was the first of the workshops. We spent the morning talking about logistics of the grant (each school will receive $5000), who the partners are (Bogli Consulting, Oregon Dairy Council, Oregon Department of Education, Oregon Department of Human Services, Alliance for a Healthier Generation and Action for Healthy Kids) and why we applied for the grant. We applied to help one community who has already developed infrastructure around coordinated school health to help them implement their wellness policy.

We spent some time reviewing their district wellness policy through the lens of the eight components of coordinated school health. We discussed strengths of the policy and weaknesses of it. Schools discussed how much of the policy they think they are currently implementing.

Each school had an opportunity to share what they’ve put in place around school health. All have sustained to some degree a school health advisory council, laps program for kids, staff wellness opportunities and much more!

In the afternoon, the Alliance for a Healthier Generation presented their Healthy Schools Builder. Each of the four Coos Bay schools have until February to complete the inventory online. In February our team will go back to Coos Bay and review the results and use data to review best practices, resources and develop an action plan.

From their, implementation occurs and in May the schools will complete the inventory for a second time to see how they’ve improved their school health efforts.

It’s exciting to be a part of such a strong school health community. Each principal at each of the four schools truly believes that the work they’ve done around school health has made a huge impact on the lives and academics of their students and larger school community. I commend them and hope they will continue to be recognized for the outstanding coordinated school health work they do!