School Wellness Policy

School Wellness Policy

The policies outlined within this document are intended to create a school environment that protects and promotes the health of our students.  Our commitment to providing nutrition education and regular physical activity, as well as access to nutritious foods for all students, are described here.  The School Wellness Policy updates annually. For more information, contact Lisa Papasadero, Services Director, lpapasadero@trilliumfamily.org.

Policies: 

  1. Health councils/The Wellness Team

  2. Public Involvement

  3. Nutritional quality of foods and beverages on campus

  4. Nutrition and physical activity promotion & nutrition goals

  5. Physical activity opportunities and physical education

  6. Monitoring and policy review

  7. Triennial Assessment

Preamble

Clients need access to healthful foods and opportunities to be physically active in order to grow, learn, and thrive; good health fosters students attendance and education; obesity rates have doubled in children and tripled in adolescents over the last two decades, and physical inactivity and excessive calorie intake are the prominent cause of obesity; heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes are responsible for two-thirds of the deaths in the United States, and major risk factors for those diseases, include unhealthy eating habits, physical inactivity, and obesity, often are established in childhood.

Trillium Family Services is committed to providing an environment that promotes and protects the client’s health, well-being, and ability to learn by supporting healthy eating and physical activity. Therefore, it is the policy of Trillium Family Services that:

  • The facility will engage students, staff, teachers, food service professionals, and other interested community members in developing, implementing, monitoring, and reviewing company-wide nutrition and physical activity policies. The facility will designate one or more local educational authority officials or school officials to ensure that the school complies with the Wellness Policies.

  • All Students in grades k-12 will have opportunities, support, and encouragement to be physically active on a regular basis and have the opportunities to learn the nutritional goals.

  • Foods and beverages served at school will meet the nutrition recommendations of the U.S. Dietary guidelines for Americans.

  • A qualified child nutrition professional will provide students with access to a variety of nutritious and appealing foods that meet the health and nutrition needs of students; will accommodate the religious, ethic, and cultural diversity of the student body in meal planning; and will provide clean, safe, and pleasant settings and adequate time for students to eat.

To the maximum extent practicable, our facility will participate in available federal school meal programs including the school breakfast program and National lunch program. Staff and/or a qualified child nutrition professional will provide nutrition education and physical education to foster lifelong habits of healthy eating and physical activity, will establish linkages between health education and school meal programs, with related community services.

 

To achieve these policy goals:

  1. Health councils / The Wellness Team

The facility will create, strengthen, or work within existing health councils to develop, implement, monitor, review, and as necessary, revise nutrition and physical activity policies. The councils also will serve as recourses to school sites for implementing those policies. (A health council i.e., the wellness team consists of a group of individuals representing the facility and administrators, representatives of the school food authority, teachers of physical education and school heath professionals, as well as parents and students, and members of the public.)

  1. Public Involvement

The facility will inform and update the public (including parents, students, and others in the community) about the content and implementation of the Wellness Policies.  Periodic assessment measurements will be made available to the public, including:

  • The extent to which the facility is in compliance with the Wellness Policy;

  • The extent to which the facility’s Wellness Policy compares to model local school wellness policies; and

  • The progress made in attaining the goals of the local wellness policy.

 

  1. Nutritional quality of foods and beverages served on campus.

 

Meals:

Meals served through the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs will:

  • Be appealing and attractive to clients;

  • Be served in clean and pleasant settings;

  • Meet, at a minimum, nutritional requirements established by local, state, and federal status and regulations;

  • Offer a variety of fruits and vegetables;

  • Serve only 1% and fat free milk (flavored or unflavored) and nutritionally-equivalent non-dairy alternatives (to be defined by USDA);

  • Ensure that the grains served are of whole grain-rich content.

  • Engage clients and staff, through taste tests of new entrees and surveys, in selecting foods served through the meal program in order to identify new, healthful, and appealing food choices.

Breakfast: 

To ensure that all clients have breakfast , either at home or at our facility, in order to meet their nutritional needs and enhance their ability to learn:

The facility will, to the extent possible, operate the School Breakfast Program. 

Snacks: Snacks are given per clients’ needs and may include a protein, grains, water, fruit and/or raw vegetables.  Standards and nutrition guidelines for all foods and beverages available, but not sold to students on the school campus during the school day (for example classroom parties or rewards), follow the Smart Snacks standards as stated in 7 CFR 210.31(c)(3)(iii) and are consistent with the school meal requirements.  The school day is the period from the midnight before to 30 minutes after the end of the official school day. To qualify as a Smart Snack, a snack or entrée must first meet the general nutrition standards:

  • Be a grain product that contains 50 percent or more whole grains by weight (have a whole grain as the first ingredient); or

  • Have as the first ingredient a fruit, a vegetable, a dairy product, or a protein food; or

  • Be a combination food that contains at least ¼ cup of fruit and/or vegetable; and

  • The food must meet the nutrient standards for calories, sodium, sugar, and fats:

Free meals:  

All clients at Trillium Family Services are eligible for free school meals.

Meal time and scheduling:   

Facility: 

Will provide clients with at least 20 minutes to eat after sitting down for breakfast and 20 minutes to eat after sitting down for lunch;

Meal times will be scheduled at appropriate times, e.g., lunch should be scheduled between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m.; tutoring, club, or organizational meetings or activities should not be scheduled during meal times unless clients may eat during activities; clients are provided access to hand washing or hand sanitizing before they eat meals or snacks; and should take reasonable steps to accommodate the tooth-brushing of clients with special oral health needs(e.g. orthodontia or high tooth decay risk).

Qualifications of food service staff.

Trained Dietary Services staff will administer the meal programs. As part of the facility responsibility to operate a food service program, we will provide continuing professional development for all nutrition program personnel, meeting required professional standards per the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 in our facility. Staff development programs should include appropriate certification and/or training programs for child nutrition directors, nutrition managers, and cafeteria workers, according to their levels of responsibility.   A state/county Food Handler’s certificate is required for all to be re-issued every three years. 

Sharing of foods and beverages: 

The facility should discourage clients from sharing their foods or beverages with one another during meal or snack times, given concerns about allergies and other restrictions on some children’s diets as well as the spread of germs.

Foods and beverages sold individually to clients (i.e., foods sold outside of reimbursable school meals, such as through vending machines, cafeteria a la cart [snack] lines, fundraisers, school stores, etc.): Clients are not allowed to use the vending machines and a la carte items are not offered at our facility. 

  1. Nutrition and physical activity promotion.

The study of health education prepares students to make healthy decisions and take healthy actions on matters concerning personal, family and community health. It is the goal for students to become health literate (the ability to obtain, incorporate and understand basic health information and services) and to use such information and services in health-enhancing ways.

The health education standards are identified as health skills in nine conceptual areas (alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use prevention; prevention and control of disease; promotion of environmental health; promotion of healthy eating; promotion of mental health, social, and emotional health; promotion of physical activity; promotion of sexual health; unintentional injury prevention; and violence and suicide prevention). 

Nutrition Goals

The nutrition goals are to introduce the importance of eating from all five food groups using the MyPlate icon and a variety of hands-on activities.  All students will be introduced to what are healthy food choices and what is a balanced diet.  Trillium Family Services will use the USDA “Serving Up My Plate: A Yummy Curriculum” resource at: www.fns.usda.gov/tn/serving-myplate-yummy-curriculum or other resources as they become available.

  1. Physical activity opportunities and physical education

Daily physical education

All Students in grades k-12, including students with disabilities, special health care needs, and in alternative educational settings, will receive daily physical education for 30 minutes a day for the entire school year. Student’s involvement in other activities involving physical activity will not be substituted for meeting the physical education requirement. Students will spend at least 50 percent of physical education class participating in moderate to vigorous physical activity.

Daily Recess:

All elementary students will have at least 20 minutes a day of supervised recess, preferably outdoors, during which schools should encourage moderate to vigorous physical activity through the provision of space and equipment.

Schools should discourage extended periods of (i.e., periods of two or more hours) of inactivity. When activities, such as mandatory school-wide testing, make it necessary for students to remain indoors for long periods of time, schools should give students periodic breaks during which they are encouraged to get up and move around.

Physical activity:

Portland Public School teachers facilitate PE during the school day.  After school, the units have a period for recreation in the afternoon.  After dinner the units have a period for recreation in the early evening.  Weekends have a morning time for recreation as well as the afternoon and evening times.  When possible, we utilize outings and off campus trips for recreation purposes.  And horticulture is a recreation activity the units participate in weekly.

Physical activity and punishment:

Teachers and other school and community personnel will not use physical activity (e.g., running laps, pushups) or withhold opportunities for physical activity (e.g., recess, physical education) as punishment.

  1. Monitoring and policy review

Monitoring:

The wellness team will ensure compliance with those policies in our facility.

The food service staff will ensure compliance with nutrition policies within facility food service areas and will report on this matter to the director. In addition, the facility will designate one or more local educational authority officials to ensure that the school complies with the Wellness Policy; and will report on the most recent USDA School Meals Initiative (SMI) review findings and any result changes. If the facility has not received a SMI review from the state agency within the last five years, the facility will request from the state agency that a SMI review be scheduled as soon as possible.

The wellness team will develop a summary report yearly on facility-wide compliance with the facility established nutrition and physical activity wellness policies, based on impute from the classrooms within each facility. That report will be provided to the school board and also distributed to all health councils, parents/teacher organizations, school principals, and school health services personnel in the district.

The public will be annually notified of the local school wellness policy and any updates to the policy.  Periodic assessment measurements will be made available to the public, including: the extent to which the facility is in compliance with the Wellness Policy; the extent to which the facility’s Wellness Policy compares to model local school wellness policies; and the progress made in attaining the goals of the local wellness policy.

Policy review:

Assessments will be repeated yearly to help review policy compliance, assess progress, and determine areas in need of improvement.  Parents, clients, representatives of the school food authority, teachers of physical education, school health professionals, the school board, school administrators, and the general public to participate in the development, implementation, and periodic review and update of the local school wellness policy. As a part of that review, the facility will review our nutrition and physical education policies and program elements. The facility will, as necessary, revise the wellness policies and develop work plans to facilitate their implementations.

  1. Triennial Assessment

The facility will develop a triennial assessment report that describes the extent to which its schools comply with the local school wellness policy, the extent to which the local policy aligns with model policies, and a description of progress towards attaining policy goals as described in 7 CFR 210.31(e)(2). There is local discretion on the format of the report. This report must be made available to the public (7 CFR 210.31(d)(3)).   In addition, the facility documents when and how the policy is evaluated. For example, an agenda or attendance sheet could be used as documentation that the local school wellness policy was evaluated at a stakeholder meeting.  The wellness policy will be compared against model policies during the triennial assessment (7 CFR 210.31(e)(2)(ii)).

Triennial Wellness Policy Assessment Completed 6/16/2022

SECTION 1: STRONG POLICIES AND ALIGNED PRACTICES

Our organization has worked hard to uplift our Local School Wellness Policy (LSWP).  In this section we are highlighting the items that are both written in our LSWP and are effectively implemented.  We are happy to report that we are meeting or exceeding the standards for all items sold anywhere on campus.  We are providing more than the recommended amount of actual eating time for both breakfast and lunch every day. Although one big highlight is that we serve all of our student as free so there are NEVER any unpaid meal balances to take care of!

 SECTION 2: CREATE PRACTICE IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

We are a different type of school environment, where the ebb and flow of the students’ residential life often takes priority.  In this section we compare our written policy to the actual practices to determine where we can be better in our actions.  In this assessment, we have found some areas to improve. Ensuring that middle and high school aged students receive a set amount of time for physical education each week and ensuring that food served in the classroom meets the smart snack standards. This is our first assessment and will serve as a baseline for future assessments.  We will be creating our own assessment that more accurately reflects our organization and type of work we do.

 SECTION 3: UPDATE POLICIES

This section compares our actual practices to our written LSWP and determines where our written policy should be updated.  We are happy to report that this is our biggest section.  We are actually doing more than our written policy talks about.  We will be updating our LSWP to include language that covers – free drinking water available at mealtimes, professional standards training for staff, and marketing (which we don’t do at all!). 

 SECTION 4: OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH

In this section we are comparing our written LSWP and Practices to the regulations and recommendations to determine opportunities for growth.  We are happy to report that no federally required regulations made it into this category.  We need to work together toward incorporating more physical education and nutrition education into the students’ classroom, lunchroom, and life.