Schools to see rules on nutrition, physical activity

The Iowa Board of Education revised the state law's restrictions aimed at combating junk food in Iowa's schools, making them stricter. The new version of requirements say soda will be off limits to students unless they bring it themselves. Caffeinated drinks cannot be sold to elementary students. Fruit and vegetable juices sold in school buildings can't have added sweeteners.

The rules state that nachos with cheese sauce, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, french fries and potato chips will not be available for sale in Iowa schools.

The Healthy Kids Act's nutritional requirements also say lunch entrees can't contain more than 400 calories, and sugar and fat cannot make up more than 35 percent of most foods calories.

The Spencer school district has already attempted to address several of the rules targeting food sold in vending machines and via a la carte lunchroom stands. Pop is not available in the district's vending machines and more healthy alternatives are served during lunch hour.

District officials now find themselves pondering how they'll meet the physical fitness standards also outlined in the Healthy Kids Act. These require schools to ensure that every student in grades K-3 has 30 minutes a day of physical activity. Students in grades 6-12 are required to meet a 120-minute per week, or 24 minutes per school day, standard.

"Most of our students will have very little or no problem meeting the 120 minutes a week required by the Healthy Kids Act when it's enacted," Spencer High School Principal Joe Mueting reported recently. "Physical education classes will more than meet the requirements for freshmen and sophomores, who meet for approximately 125 minutes each week. Juniors and seniors in PE will meet the requirement for the semester they are in PE. For those not in an activity allowed by the act, a plan must be developed by the school and parents and then monitored by parents."

Mueting, who said intentions are to have an official implementation plan in place by this fall, added, "What we're going to try and avoid, if at all possible, is the one option they give you, and that's to give responsibility to the parents and say, 'You sign off on your child if they've done 120 minutes of physical activity' and that's good to go. Now, we may need parental support on this, but we're going to try and make sure that we are able to provide something within the school day for those students."

As it's outlined in the act, the 120 minutes of physical activity required each week for secondary students can include any "movement, manipulation or exertion of the body leading to improved levels of physical fitness and quality of life." In addition to time spent in PE classes, students will be allowed to count the time they spend in sports, dance or marching band activities, among others.

"Any sport that they're in would pass. So, there's several things that we could use in addition to physical education classes," Mueting said. "Juniors and seniors are the ones who are going to have a little bit more difficulty, because they only take PE for one semester. And, (the 120 minute time requirement) has to be per week. So, juniors and seniors are the ones who are going to have to have most of the individual programming.

"However, when we did a small sampling of students who were not in a sport or an activity that would qualify and were not in PE during that semester, we ended up with about 35 students. So, it's not a lot of students that we're talking about that would have to make this up in sports."

Participating in an intramural activity at an area fitness establishment or volunteering to rake a neighbor's leaves or shovel their sidewalks are among the myriad of non-school activities which would also work to meet requirements.

As Mueting offered an example of a SHS physical activity agreement parents may have to sign for their son or daughter involved in individual physical activity programming beginning in 2010-11, he added, "Our desire as we go through this plan is to make sure that we don't forget the education part of physical education. While all the activity is certainly important, we think that we need to work on this plan so it involves some education in terms of what is good, healthy living. We will try to make sure that's part of the process. So, we'll incorporate that not only into our success programs, but also into individual programming."