Educator Support
We have been talking with teachers and administrators for over a decade about school health & wellness.
Healthy Students Healthy State provides the long-needed solution.
Our K-5 school recess bill was supported by the Arizona Education Association (AEA), the main “teacher’s union” in Arizona. Teachers recognize that their students cannot simply sit still in their seats learning all day long, with no physical activity.
In fact, as schools have cut recess & physical education time, many teachers have added brief “brain breaks” for students in their classrooms–with several minutes of physical activity “next to the desk” in their classroom several times daily.
We have also had a lot of support over the years from Arizona Health & Physical Education (AzHPE), the professional association for physical and health education teachers in Arizona.
Individual administrators have also been supportive, including past leaders of Arizona School Administrators (ASA), and administrators who really “get” the importance of a well-rounded education. (See our People web page.)
However, a number of administrators and school board members saw the recess bill as an “unfunded mandate”. In other words, the law introduced a legal requirement for schools to provide either two recesses, or one recess plus a PE session, each full school day for grades K-5—but without providing additional appropriations.
So we responded by committing to work hard to find adequate funding for any future mandates, for which we advocated.
Healthy Students Healthy State provides enough permanent new funding to pay for all schools to have adequate amounts of physical and health education, physical activity, and school counseling and nursing, using national recommendations for the numbers of minutes of instruction for each subject and for ratios of students to teachers and other staff.
Accountability is important for ensuring positive outcomes and on-going funding. But we have heard educator concerns about the current school accountability system overload—the burden of continual assessments and standardized test preparation and lengthy high-stakes annual testing.
With Healthy Student Healthy State, schools can minimize the time required for health-related assessments, but still receive timely helpful information:
- Data on physical activity levels provide rapid feedback to teachers, so that outcomes can be used immediately to make improvements, rather than waiting months for results. Fit-bit-type wrist bands can provide immediate data, and allow easier aggregating of data so that averaged data can be shared while protecting student privacy.
- In-class survey data on health knowledge, attitudes and behaviors, with privacy protection, can help health educators understand students’ perspectives and experiences, in order to address relevant topics and strategies that can develop students’ health habits and critical thinking.
Protecting student health-related information is essential. Only authorized school staff with a need to know have access to the individual student’s outcomes data. Regularly-provided aggregated-only privacy-protected “dashboard” summary data can demonstrate progress to funders and the public, in order to sustain funding, while protecting individual student data.
(In addition, parents may withhold their consent for their student to be taught certain topics, which parents view as controversial or too sensitive. Protecting parent rights are an important part of ensuring long-term public support for preventive education.)
Click here for a summary of key information on Healthy Student Healthy State. The full 2-page pdf overview is downloadable from our Resources page.
Local Control
Another comment we have heard often is that schools and their boards value “local control” of schools.
So Healthy Students Healthy State lets schools decide how to implement any mandates, giving school leaders the freedom (and funding) to do what they think best for their particular school situation.
For example, the high level of funding, plus local control, allow the school day to be structured in any combination of:
Keep the school day length as-is, but reallocate a small portion of current reading, math, etc. instruction time to physical and health education and physical activity including recess. (A number of studies indicate that physical activity may in many cases improve test scores more than the additional seat-time provided in recent years.) The funds saved could then be used to pay teachers more, and to provide more professional development and other investments to improve academic outcomes, rather than to increase total minutes in the standard school day.
Extend the school day, to preserve current teaching minutes for reading, math, etc., while achieving new mandated minutes of health-related instruction and physical activity.
Work with nonprofit community partners, before- and/or after-school, using 10-20% of the school’s HSHS funds, to provide physical activity and other health-related programs, outside the official school day—as long as 60 minutes of daily activity (and the minimum minutes required for physical and health education) happen for all students.
To elaborate on the last point:
In addition to fully funding physical and health education and school counseling and nursing, 10-20% of Healthy Students Healthy State funds can be spent by the school at its discretion, in order for the school to implement its local wellness policy (LWP) plan including the new health-related mandates under HSHS.
(Note: The Local Wellness Policy is mandated already for each school by the USDA for the federal school meal program. However, the LWP’s quality has often been inadequate, and for many schools it will have to be improved. Also, parental input to the Local Wellness Policy plan helps to ensure parental support.)
Student Academic Performance & Mental Health Will Also Improve
School professionals believe in evidence-based approaches. The evidence connecting physical activity and academic performance is compelling. And we know from surveys of middle school students that PE/gym is the favorite subject of about 3 in 10 students, while about half of students already recognize that physical activity and healthy nutrition help them succeed in the classroom. In other words, Healthy Students Healthy State will help to motivate students for school and will improve academic achievement.
In addition, teachers and administrators care deeply about students. And they value the importance of student physical health and mental wellness, in their own right, as well as for students’ success in school.
So we expect broad support by teachers and administrators for Healthy Students Healthy State, in its plan for students to develop healthier habits and lead much healthier lives.
How Can I Help?
We need your help in getting the word out!
One quick easy step that you can take now to help us is to fill out our Contact form.
(We only use your email address for our own work. And we do not solicit you for donations.)
When you fill out the Contact form, you can specify if you wish to assist us, and how you want us to follow up with you.
Another thing you can do is to encourage your own personal network of educators, and your own education organization, to support Healthy Students Healthy State.
You can start by forwarding this webpage to others at your organization or in other areas of education…or even to friends and family.
On your mobile device please hold down to copy a link to this webpage to text to them;
or forward this webpage via email.
Here are other links you can copy & paste to text or email; or click to create an email now:
About Healthy Future US – click to Email now
Healthy Students Healthy State – Overview & Details – click to Email now.
Thank you! Working together, we can make a better world for future generations!