Peters Township School Board considers new student wellness policy
By Harry Funk/Staff writer/hfunk@thealmanac.net
The days of moms sending cupcakes to school to celebrate the birthdays of everyone in their kids’ classes appear to be over.
A new student wellness policy on the table in Peters Township School District, intended to comply more fully with recently implemented federal regulations, contains this item:
“Classroom parties and celebrations with foods and beverages should be limited to no more than one per month in each classroom.”
The policy, which received its first reading at the school board’s Jan. 16 meeting, contains revisions to a similar measure adopted by the board several months ago to address newly added provisions to the federal Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The Pennsylvania School Boards Association provided a model policy for districts to follow.
“They said we had to have a standard, and our standard was that if you were going to provide food to students during the day, we would like you to consider its nutritional value and its effect on childhood obesity,” school board member Lisa Anderson, who chairs the board’s policy, explained. “And that is the policy that we approved to comply with the regulations.”
A representative of the state Department of Education, though, determined that the policy did not actually constitute a “standard,” and if the district didn’t approve one, it would receive a “finding of noncompliance,” according to Anderson.
“So what you have in front of you tonight,” she told fellow board members, “are some changes to our wellness policy that were acceptable to the person from the Department of Education, so that we would not receive a finding. They don’t do much more than already exists within our practices.”
She said the only exception would be the limit on classroom parties. The board plans to vote on adopting the policy next month.
In other business at the Jan. 16 meeting:
- •The school board approved a resolution stipulating that a real estate tax increase for 2018-19 would not exceed the 2.4 percent index set for the district by the Department of Education.
The resolution states in part that the board “certifies that increasing any tax at a rate less than or equal to the established index will be sufficient to balance its final budget.”
Under the provisions of Act 1 of 2006, school districts can apply for exceptions to seek increases in excess of the index.
Peters Township’s current real estate tax rate is 13.19 mills. A 2.4 percent increase would raise it to slightly more than 13.5 mills.
- The board approved the 2018-19 school calendar, with students scheduled to return to classes Aug. 22. That represents an earlier date compared with recent years.
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The final day for students, for anyone who wants to plan that far in advance, is June 5, 2019.