District Administration - November 2008 - (Page 33)

It’s important to implement good marketing packages around pricing and promotion for new, healthier products. Christy Manso Alliance for a Healthier Generation he Alliance offers several valuable tools for schools. Our product navigator is an online catalog of compliant products from participating companies. You can use it to create a shopping list of foods that meet our guidelines. We also offer a nutrition calculator for those products that you think might meet our guidelines but you don’t see in the navigator. Both tools are on our website at www.healthiergeneration.org. In moving to healthier competitive foods and beverages, the ﬁrst step is to adopt guidelines across all venues. For example, there could be a vending machine outside the principal’s ofﬁce, outside the gym; maybe there’s the school store down the hall. All of these are separate venues generally coordinated and managed by different administrators. It’s important to adopt the guidelines across the school building or even across your district so students aren’t going from one venue to another to get non-compliant, high-fat products. Step two is to inventory all of those venues that sell competitive foods and beverages. You want to determine who is responsible for each and who gets the funding from each of those places. Then you need to meet with all the staff members who are responsible for each venue and plan how to make changes to ensure compliance with the guidelines, so you’re changing all your venues at once. You may have to amend contracts, particularly beverage contracts, so it’s a good idea to get your school or business ofﬁcer engaged if that is the case. You should also consult with students and faculty representatives early and often. Students like to be involved, and they really don’t like changes that they see just being imposed on them. We developed a student activism kit called Steps for a Healthier School, which takes students step by step through the process of making the changes in their school. There is some adult supervision but it’s really student led. T We recognize that you have a lot of guidelines you likely have to follow. Maybe you have state regulations around nutrition; maybe you have some local regulations. Maybe you even have school or district regs. You’re wondering what to follow. Our guidelines are not intended to undermine more restrictive guidelines. If your existing laws and regulations are less restrictive, following the Alliance guidelines removes the guesswork. We offer science-based, age-appropriate guidelines that will provide lower calorie, nutritious snacks and beverages to students and reinforce the value of calorie and portion control. We’ve gotten the argument that the Alliance guidelines don’t allow for freedom of choice, but we think they do. It’s a matter of adjusting the environment to help students choose differently, to help students choose from healthier options. It’s important to implement good marketing packages around pricing and promotion for new, healthier products. One of the ways you can get student acceptance to happen more quickly is through meaningful student involvement. As we deﬁne it, it’s student-initiated, shared decision-making with adults. It’s mobilizing change at the grassroots level because we know that that leads to a sustainable solution. Students tend to resist changes they view as being imposed on them by school administrators. To view the full, archived edition of our Sensible Snacking web seminar, please go to www.DistrictAdministration.com/GenerationMax Sponsored By http://www.healthiergeneration.org http://www.healthiergeneration.org http://www.DistrictAdministration.com/GenerationMax

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - November 2008

District Administration - November 2008
School Breakfasts: An Added Value
Contents
Editor’s Letter
Letters
1-2-3 Campus Safety
News Update
Administrator Profile
District Profile
Snacks as Part of Your School Nutrition Program
Technology
Facilities & Construction
Admissions
DA Web Seminars
Leadership Assessment
How Well Does This Web Site Work?
New Products
Technology Books
Professional Opinion
Supervisor’s Opinion
Crisis Response
Problem Solution
Research Center

District Administration - November 2008