Grants fund CSBA policy work
Published: August 8, 2012
CSBA members will benefit from two grants obtained through the California School Boards Foundation to supplement CSBA’s ongoing work in crucial areas.
Obesity prevention and school discipline: A $175,000 grant from The California Endowment will help the association raise awareness of the link between these issues and student learning, and promote and support effective policies and best practices at the state and local levels. Focusing on nutrition, water, physical activity and provisions of the federal Healthy and Hunger Free Kids Act, CSBA’s work will help increase local educational agency governance teams’ capacity. Much of the work will be captured in updates of CSBA’s two key resource guides addressing student wellness: “Student Wellness: A Healthy Food and Physical Activity Policy Resource Guide” and “Monitoring for Success: Student Wellness Policy Implementation Monitoring Guide and Report.” Current editions are available for free download from CBA’s Student Wellness Resource List.
Summer wellness and learning: A decade of work at CSBA has already gone into educating, encouraging and supporting school board members in their efforts to create and sustain healthy school environments. Now, a $50,000 grant from the David & Lucile Packard Foundation is enhancing CSBA’s efforts to help LEAs make summer part of the continuous learning cycle for students and educate its members, state and federal policymakers and the public about the importance of addressing students’ health and wellness in order to enhance learning and achievement. CSBA will work with the Summer Matters initiative through the Partnership for Children and Youth, the Summer Meals Coalition and other groups to develop additional resources, communications and conference presentations.
“These grants are helping us create awareness and provide resources on critical issues impacting student learning and achievement,” explained CSBA Assistant Executive Director for Member Services Martin Gonzalez. “Research shows that local school board policy, when developed and implemented with the input of local stakeholders, can make transformative change possible at the school level. It is this sort of transformative change that will ultimately benefit the lives of children and communities.”