I am often asked, “Who is the Local School Wellness Policy Tool Kit for?” My answer is, “Everyone.” All of us are affected by environmental and food systems. The Tool Kit is a guide to help everyone exercise their rights and increase the access to healthy food, a clean environment, and advocate for the health and well-being of children.

The Local School Wellness Policy Tool Kit is intended to inspire anyone who feels transformation is needed in educating children or recognizes school systems have an enormous impact on the environment and food production. The Tool Kit informs individuals and organizations who can help build networks from existing frameworks, such as the wellness policy, that already prevail within school districts.

I spent over two decades in the classroom as a middle school art teacher, STEAM, and garden educator in one of the largest school districts in Ohio. My classroom was located across from the cafeteria, and as a unified arts teacher, I clocked thousands of hours of lunch-duty during my tenure and throughout the pandemic. I wanted to find ways to help students make choices about what they consume, and learn how much they knew about how food is produced. I became a member of the city’s local food policy council and the Slow Food USA Food & Farming Policy Committee to advocate for nutritious school meals.

In the district where I taught, I initiated and led the wellness committee, and built a season extension garden-based learning program that I shared throughout the region, state, and nation. During this journey, I learned how to develop relationships outside the silo of my classroom, cross through barriers for providing students with local foods, and establish frameworks through collaboration and policy-making. I transferred my success for building relationships and networks as an internal stakeholder to an external school district partner as the Green Schoolyards Manager at Green Umbrella, Greater Cincinnati’s Regional Climate Collaborative. I currently work with school district leaders on whole-district sustainability in the areas of green space, green workforce development, and student well-being. From these experiences, the Wellness Tool Kit emerged as a how-to guide for people to become changemakers, funneling advocacy and energy into action.

By sharing my journey, I hope you will be inspired to continue or begin your own.The wellness toolkit will be updated on an annual basis and the content will shift to address the rapidly changing world around us based on your feedback.

Share Your School Wellness Story with us! Here are some possible story starters: describe how your organization partnered with a school district to deliver a physical activity initiative, mental health programming or ways students are being connected to healthy school meals through garden-based learning. Email me a brief overview (140 words or less) and a photo that will be considered for inclusion in an upcoming edition of this newsletter. Please reach out to me with input and collaboration ideas or if you would like to work through any barriers together.

This newsletter, we’re focusing on Chapter 3 of the Wellness Policy Tool Kit: A Wellness Policy Network. This is your chance to go big this school year by realizing a District-wide Wellness Network!

First, dive into the Collective Impact Forum and other models such as Policy, Systems and Environmental Change (PSE) to form a mindset for engaging during the wellness policy implementation process (these sources are also linked in the Tool Kit).

Next, check out this new resource: the Alliance for a Healthier Generation Action Center provides an all-in-one shop for building a wellness framework for students and staff. With a no-cost account, you can get started on benchmarking your program and access customized training built around your school’s goal.

Be a building block in creating a school district wellness network!

Maine passed LD 1543, which creates a Green Schools Network, to be developed with the Maine Dept. of Education, schools, and community-based organizations. Colorado and New Mexico added funds to outdoor equity grants, which provides outdoor learning and engagement opportunities.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the withdrawal of guidelines that had previously required those administering school meal programs to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

What does SNAP have to do with School Wellness? “If families lose access to SNAP and Medicaid due to program changes from this legislation, that will affect students’ ability to be directly certified for school meals through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). In other words, we’re adding more red tape for families and school food programs to get healthy meals to kids.States will have to fill in for federal funding gaps, which has the potential to pit nutrition programs like SNAP and school meals against each other or cause states to pull out from nutrition programs altogether (from the Farm to School Policy Tracker). Imposing work requirements for SNAP are happening now while some states taking up 15% of SNAP which could end programs will not go into effect until after the midterms 2027 (two year delay for states with high payment error rates).

Last week, Senators Jim Justice (R-WV) and Jack Reed (D-RI) introduced the Strengthening Local Food Security Act, which would create a permanent grant program for state and Tribal governments to procure local foods for distribution in schools and food access programs. The first step is securing more Republican cosponsors to help demonstrate the bill's bipartisan appeal. Partners are needed to reach out and ask their Senators to cosponsor!

The Improving Training for School Food Service Workers Act (S.1736/H.B.3367) would invest in professional development for school food teams. This bill would provide resources for scratch cooking, nutrition education, and culinary skill-building in schools, and your voice can help get it passed. Take action here.