School Wellness Challenge

Brief Program Summary

The School Wellness Challenge, a program of the California Task Force on Youth and Workplace Wellness (Wellness Task Force) , is intended to assist California school districts in successfully implementing their Local Wellness Policies (LWPs). In June 2006, school districts across the nation adopted LWPs, motivated in large part by a federal mandate requiring such policies in order for schools to continue receiving school meal assistance.  The aim of the federal mandate was to encourage coordinated cross-curricular and campus-wide strategies to address the increasing number of overweight and unfit children in our schools. However, as well meaning as the mandate may be, if such strategies are not effectively implemented, the Center for Disease Control estimates that roughly one in four children born in 2005 will develop type 2 diabetes, with these numbers nearly doubling for African-American and Latino children.

The School Wellness Challenge will provide a mechanism for information sharing between districts and provide access to experts in the field. More importantly, the School Wellness Challenge will provide the materials and tools necessary to develop written implementation plans, including a letter template districts can use to share current information with parents and community members. Without such assistance, LWPs run the risk of gathering dust on administrative shelves.

In partnership with the Department of Health Services, Department of Education, Action for Healthy Kids California, Dairy Council of California, California School Boards Association, Project LEAN, and educators from around the state, the School Wellness Challenge will provide two unique and essential services: 1) pertinent trainings to districts in need of developing a written implementation plan (via live webcasts provided in collaboration with  the partners listed above), and 2) a promising practices handbook that will highlight exemplary implementation plans and current best practices undertaken by schools within California.

February 2007 Update
Nearly 60 school districs from Across California agreed to participate in this year’s School Wellness Challenge. If you are interested in next year’s Challenge, please look for the new application  on-line in October 2007.

 

Superintendents’ Challenge
2005-06 Winners

In 2005-06 seventeen school districts from a diverse cross-section of California communities took up the Superintendents’ Challenge. This was the first year the Challenge reviewed both the Wellness Policies and a district’s implementation plans and activities. 
From these applicants, three districts were selected as the most exemplary and were chosen as the 2005-06 Challenge Winners at a special awards ceremony at Jefferson High School in Daly City on June 5, 2006.  Each received a certificate and banner from the American Cancer Society, as well as a cash award funded in part by the Diary Council of California, Kaiser Permanente, and the California Center for Civic Participation.
Click here, for the press releases on this event.