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School board approves update to wellness policy to reflect 2024 Department of Education guidance
Summary
The board voted to adopt revisions to the district school wellness policy to align with the 2024 Department of Education School Wellness Guide after a district review identified strengths and areas for improvement across seven components.
The school board approved revisions to the district school wellness policy on a motion from the board, following a staff presentation that the changes align the policy with 2024 updates from the Department of Education School Wellness Guide.
Superintendent James Olson introduced the superintendent's report and asked Ryan Herkadars, identified in the meeting as the superintendent of accountability and accreditation, to brief the board. Herkadars told the board the district completed a review of progress toward its wellness-policy goals for the 2024–25 school year and asked the board to revise the policy to match the Department of Education’s 2024 guidance.
The district wellness team assessed seven components of the policy: nutrition environment and services; physical education and activity; health education; health services; counseling, psychological and social services; family engagement, community involvement and marketing a healthy school environment; and implementation. Herkadars said physical education and activity, health education, and counseling, psychological and social services received “perfect” scores. The other areas — nutrition environment and services; health services; family engagement, community involvement and marketing a healthy school environment; and implementation — were described as “very high” but below 100 percent.
Herkadars said the district wellness team (the directors responsible for those areas) will make plans to address the components that were not marked as perfect, and that staff would send information to principals if the board approved the policy revision. He also said this report will be added to the annual mental health and wellness update presented by Jelana Williams in May.
The board voted to approve the recommended policy revision. The action recorded during the meeting was an approval of the revised school wellness policy; no appeal or amendment was recorded in the transcript.
The board’s action directs staff to implement the revised policy and to continue reporting progress through existing wellness and mental-health update channels. The transcript does not specify an implementation timetable or which specific operational changes will follow the revision.
