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Best Practices in School Culture Leadership (December 2007)
Julie Danzl, school coordinator
Steps to a Healthier MN - Minneapolis
Promote physical activity, improved nutrition, and reduced tobacco use
First. please allow me to introduce myself: I am Julie Danzl and I coordinate the Steps to a Healthier Minnesota-Minneapolis initiative for Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). Rosalind Robbins, principal of Hiawatha Community School in Minneapolis, asked me to say a few words about the work of Steps to a Healthier Minneapolis in MPS.
The Steps to a Healthier Minneapolis is a five-year initiative of the US Department of Health and Family Support that aims to help Americans live longer, better, and healthier lives by reducing the burdens of diabetes, overweight, obesity, and asthma through increasing physical activity, improving nutrition, and decreasing tobacco use. Prevention interventions take place in four settings: community, health care settings, worksites, and schools. There are 40 Steps communities across the country, including four in Minnesota: Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester and Willmar. I encourage principals statewide to visit the Steps to a Healthier Minnesota Web site at: http://www.stepstoahealthiermn.org.
Over the past two years, the Steps efforts at MPS have focused on the development and implementation of the district’s wellness policy. I am sure Minnesota principals are keenly aware of opportunities and challenges of implementing the wellness policy at the school-level. Yet, with this new law, everyone stands to win. Research has established that student health and academic achievement are interrelated.
Another project that has been gaining momentum is Safe Routes to School (SR2S). SR2S is a national initiative that is underway in both the city of Minneapolis and the MPS. It provides strategic planning, funding, and other support to increase opportunity for students to walk and bicycle to school. Mayor R.T. Rybak allocated funding to the Minneapolis Department of Health and Family Support to develop a city and school district wide plan to promote the SR2S idea. The goal is to build a successful partnership between MPS and the city to plan a SR2S program.
The national SR2S initiative provides $612 million to all 50 states and the District of Columbia to help communities improve infrastructure, such as sidewalks and bike paths, and to support education, encouragement, and enforcement programs that make it safer and easier for children to walk and bike to school. In 2007, MPS received $10,000 to help promote new Safe Routes to School activities at five Minneapolis elementary schools, including Hiawatha Community School. The city of Minneapolis Public Works Department received $500,000 to upgrade crosswalks and signage on streets adjacent to these same five schools.
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