School Health Council topics

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Good morning, co-workers! Just a few questions about school health councils. First, do you have one at your school? If so, did you start it? Also, are you in charge of meetings, and if so, what are some topics that you meet on? Thanks so much for any input. As you can probably tell, I have come back from Christmas Break and been 'blind-sided' (sounds familiar, right?). Have a marvelous day!!

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Specializes in NCSN.

We have both a student and a staff wellness groups. My PE is technically in charge of the student and I run the staff but we work together on most everything. She runs the student meetings each month because they are at the same time as my district nurse meeting but we write the agenda together.

We talk about ways to be healthy (sleep, eating well etc) and each season we have a challenge that the kids advertise and promote. At the start of the year we had a "No screen for me" contest where we sent home a chart where students/parents could log screen free time and what they did. The class with the most hours screen free after 2 months won an extra recess. Then we held a pumpkin run all about healthy goal setting (it didn't matter who was the fastest, people who met their goals got a prize). Right now we are ramping up for Jump rope for heart and we are trying to figure out an end of the year walk a thon.

For all of these the students are in charge of making posters and at the monthly assembly, they talk about them with the whole school.

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Specializes in Pediatrics Retired.

In Texas, all public school districts are required to have a School Health Advisory Council. Otherwise, over the years, we/I have tried all kinds of campus wellness/exercise/fitness programs, competitions, gimics, etc and interest goes by the wayside or it just starts a big argument about "fairness" so I've abandoned any effort in this area.

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Yes we have them in each school. Yes the nurses had to start them! Our consisted of one admin, school nurse, 1 teacher, 1 custodian, a PE teacher or coach and a parent. But our district could care less about a health council but its a state mandate thing so we have one that "looks good on the books". It is supposed to consist of quarterly meetings but I never got anyone to meet. It consisted of me running around to the individuals on the council and discussing the topics and having them sign a sheet saying we met. Its ridiculous. We were supposed to be audited by our dept of education for health stuff in 2015 but they never came. I drove myself crazy that year making sure everything on the list was checked off and I did it al myself. When I went to my admin about something that had to be done they would say "Oh we will do whatever to make sure you dont get into trouble!" Um hello its not me this is the whole school district we are talking about. School health councils are a wonderful thing if everyone care as much as the school nurses but unfortunately we know for the most part that isnt how it is.

If you need to start one some good topics are School Wellness Policies, any health related policy that needs reviewed, playground safety, employee wellness ect.

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Specializes in IMC, school nursing.
School health councils are a wonderful thing if everyone care as much as the school nurses but unfortunately we know for the most part that isnt how it is.

School districts will not take them seriously because Federal $$$$s are not tied to their existence.

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