Featured Grant Opportunity: Whole Kids Foundation School Garden Grant
School gardens have been proven to be educational and positive for students. Giving kids the chance to learn about the science of growing food and being rewarded with healthy offerings from their hard work can go a long way with nutrition education. The Whole Kids Foundation, in partnership with FoodCorps, is offering funding opportunities through its terrific School Garden Grant Program to make this a reality for your school, or help you keep your existing garden growing.
The program is open to K-12 schools, or a non-profit working in partnership with a K-12 school, to support new or existing edible gardens on school grounds. Applications are due by October 31st, 2014. Awardees will receive a $2,000 monetary grant.
For all the details on the program and to access the application, visit the Whole Kids Foundation website.
ED Press Release: U.S. Department of Education Announces Awards of Over $70 Million to Improve School Climate and Keep Students Safe
The U.S. Department of Education has announced funding awards through four new grant programs designed to help keep students safe and improve learning environments. These programs are School Climate Transformation grants to school districts, School Climate Transformation grants to states, Project Prevent grants to school districts, and School Emergency Management grants to states. To see the list of winners for each program as well as detailed information on the program initiatives view the US ED press release.
The Insight Team would like to congratulate two of our clients who were fortunate to be awarded funding in these important new programs. Cleveland Hill Union Free School District, NY, was awarded a 2014 School Climate Transformation Grant for LEAs. Cleveland Hill’s Year 1 award amount is $222,037, and the five-year award is anticipated to be $1,095,493. New London Public Schools, CT, was awarded a 2014 Project Prevent Grant. New London’s Year 1 award amount is $616,131, and the total five-year award anticipated to be between $2.5 and $2.9 million.
Updates to 2014 CDC SHI Tool
Many schools are familiar with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) School Health Index (SHI) interactive assessment tool. Whether you’ve used it for assessment in the past or will be in the future, it is an important tool to understand.
This self-assessment tool enables schools to identify strengths and weaknesses of health and safety policies and programs and develop action plans for improving student health promotion based on federal recommendations and national standards. It is a common assessment tool utilized by schools working to improve student health through changes made with local resources, as well as a useful tool for identifying needs during the grant application process and for monitoring improvement during the grant implementation process. In fact, completion of Modules 1-4 of the School Health Index is a requirement for applying for a Carol M. White PEP grant, and PEP grant awardees must re-administer SHI by the end of their grant periods to determine progress made.
The CDC recently announced updates to the tool for 2014. These changes include updated nutrition content to align with new USDA regulations (including Smart Snacks in School nutrition standards), and revised physical education and physical activity content to align with updated national standards and advancements in physical activity programming. In addition to the changes, The Alliance for a Healthier Generation’s Healthy Schools Program has also adopted CDC’s School Health Index as its assessment tool to help schools assess their current policies and practices as well as track progress over time.
Two versions of the SHI are made available by the CDC. Version 1 retains the full comprehensive SHI, with its six health topics: nutrition, physical activity, unintentional injury and violence prevention, tobacco use prevention, asthma, and sexual health. Version 2 is focused on just two health topics: nutrition and physical activity.
To learn more about the tool, the changes, and get started with an assessment, access the SHI tool on cdc.gov
We’ll also have some additional content in the near future with more details on using the SHI tool.
