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Congratulations to the Recipients of the Excellence in School Wellness Award!

Congratulations to the Recipients of the Excellence in School Wellness Award!

The Excellence in School Wellness Award was created to recognize elementary schools for their efforts in creating a healthy school environment as a means to prevent childhood obesity and improve academic achievement. Bronx Health REACH is very pleased to announce that seven of our HEA+LTHY Schools NY partner schools have received recognition from the NYC Strategic Alliance for Health for Excellence in School Wellness!

Gold medals were awarded to the Sheridan Academy for Young Leaders-(PS 457), Jonas Bronck Elementary School-(PS 43), PS 385 Performance School, PS/MS 218 Rafael Hernandez Dual Language Magnet School, and PS 64 Pura Belpre. Honorable Mentions were given to PS 132 Garrett A. Morgan School and PS 18 John Peter Zenger. The ceremony took place on Thursday, June 14th at the Bronx United Federation of Teachers (UFT) Office and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. presented the schools with their awards.

The award consists of 16 criteria in three different categories: physical activity, nutrition, and wellness coordination. In order to receive a gold medal, schools must meet at least 10 of these criteria. For physical activity, schools must demonstrate that they have completed the NYC FITNESSGRAM screening on at least 90% of their students, have a full-time PE teacher on staff, and provide regularly scheduled physical activity breaks in at least 50% of classrooms. For nutrition, schools should have provisions such as healthy snacking and classroom celebration guidelines, a salad bar featuring at least four different vegetables, and at least 50% of eligible students participating in school breakfast. Wellness coordination criteria included the presence of an active wellness committee with a designated coordinator. (To watch a video on how one of last year’s recipients was impacted by the award, click here.) The awardees are publicly recognized for their efforts and the 2012 Gold Award recipients were all treated to tickets to a Yankees game on June 18th!

 Bronx Health REACH congratulates our HEA+LTHY Schools NY partners, as well as all of the other award recipients, for their efforts in embracing school wellness and making their schools and students healthier. Keep up the excellent work!