RPEMS Wellness Committee Meeting minutes
Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 8:15am
Principal’s Conference Room
RPEMS Wellness
ATTENDANCE: Peter Beilenson, Nicholas D’Ambrosio, Jason Goldstein, Rachel Heggins,
Luke Hollis, Kirigo Kabuga, Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner, Nancy Lewin, Melina Turtle
(recording secretary), and Larry Schugam (Baltimore Curriculum Project)
I
WELCOME

Summary of community responses: It was brought to Maiju’s attention that the
Wellness Committee could use the Whole Foods model for fundraising – they
sponsor a school/organization/fund for one day and a certain percentage of sales
that day are donated. Perhaps in conjunction with the Annual Fund. We do need
someone to take on that task. There were no volunteers at this time so tabled for
further discussion.

We welcomed Larry Schugam from the Baltimore Curriculum Project, who
joined our meeting this morning. The Project encompasses 4 East Baltimore
schools.

Josh Kaminkow would like to expand the yoga afterschool club that he does for
elementary school children.

Summary of the Alliance’s Summit on 11/8/12: Luke Hollis attended this Summit
that took place in UMBC and was arranged for the Prince Georges County
schools. He was the only person from Baltimore City. Luke came away with 2
take home points; first, as we move towards achieving Bronze status, the
somewhat bandaid approach that we’re taking should not be our ultimate goal; we
actually need to institute change that will become sustainable practice. This
might include making tangible changes to the school schedule – Luke would like
to see 2 30-minute physical education periods per week rather than the 1 45minute period that he currently has with the elementary students. Mr. D did point
out that there are state requirements for a certain number of hours of language,
math, etc instruction per week (?) Nancy Lewin suggested that the Baltimore
Education Coalition, of which RPEMS is a member, might be a catalyst for
change within the school system. The second take home message that Luke had
from the meeting was that we need to spread the wellness message to the whole
school community, by either having some sort of wellness day and night or a
wellness fair. There was discussion about what this could look like – Luke talked
about incorporating wellness into the school day with different physical activities
and then bringing that into an evening event that parents could attend and perhaps
students could run the event. We will discuss a wellness event for the spring.
Luke circulated a fact sheet with bulleted points summarizing the info he gathered
at the Summit (attached).

Summary of the Alliance training at the Tunbridge School 12/4/12: Luke and
Maiju attended. It was an introductory meeting with Tunbridge, a charter school
that is working towards certification with the Alliance as well. Part of their charter
includes 2 hours a week of physical education for every student. Luke said it was
nice to have a school nearby that was working toward same goal. They have a
dance class that Luke would like to observe.

Larry let us know that on Monday, December 10th there is a symposium at Johns
Hopkins Hospital called “Obesity Across the Life Span” and we could attend.
They will have Alliance materials, including the free book A Year of Being Well:
Messages from Families on Living Healthier Lives.
II
NATIONAL HEALTHY SCHOOL RECOGNITION


How close are we to bronze in the different areas?
 Policy/systems: we are meeting the standards in this area
 School meals: meeting this standard for bronze
 Competitive Foods: pretty close to meeting this, just need to outline the
requirements for beverage sales and MayMart is our one exception.
 Health Education: middle school level meets bronze and the challenge is the
Elementary School. Body works in elementary school is 45 minutes every
other week in K-2; we fall short for the grades 3-5, which should be 40
minutes every week. We can use other classes, like science and math, to
incorporate health education messages and work to meet the requirement.
Luke brought up again that in the short term this piece meal approach is okay
to get our bronze certification but in the long term our goal is to change the
culture to be a healthy school.
 Employee Wellness: we’re already at the Gold level
 Physical Education: another challenging area – Luke talked about Fitness
Friday and how that will add to the required minutes of PE to help meet the
certification for Bronze. He also talked about the BMore Fit training and out
of 24 Elementary teachers, 14 have had training. Also some middle-school
teachers got the training. Working on incorporating movement into the school
day so that we can meet the Bronze level certification. We meet the criteria
for middle school. Luke circulated a fact sheet at the meeting outlining the
requirements for meeting bronze and how to achieve it (attached).
 Student Wellness: we did not directly discuss how we’re doing in this last
category.
Action Plan for the Recognition Process – January deadline: our Alliance
representative in Baltimore, Precious Calloway, doesn’t know the exact date in
January when the process opens; it is heavy documentation and Maiju will be
handling all of the documentation and admission for our recognition. She will
work with the inventory and be ready to rock whenever the process opens in
January!
III
EVALUATING OUTCOMES & ASSOCIATION STATUS PLANS

Preliminary strategy for evaluating and documenting outcomes: Jason reported on
this. The most basic question is what are we trying to measure? We could do
BMI’s but what would that really tell us? There’s no tool out there now that
would fit for our needs. We need to document whether objectives were met. Mr.
D talked about the district wide climate survey that’s done twice a year and may
have info that’s pertinent to our particular needs. Perhaps year 1, we do something
simple, a before and after survey (at the start of the school year and then the end
of that same school year) with 3 simple questions. Come up with the questions by
May of 2013. Jason also discussed having a medium term goal (unsure of time
frame) and a long term goal of evaluation (5-7 years). One of the questions we’re
looking at is what did you do to change your wellness?

Association status plans – this item moved to a later meeting
IV
SPRING CALENDAR

V
Annual Calendar Outline for Spring:
 Mr. D did mention that Thursday, 12/13 there would be a last minute
meeting regarding building renovations to RP and asked Wellness
Committee to spread the word so good attendance – discussion about how
the renovations could incorporate wellness
 Luke said would do bike workshop again
 5th grade fun run is in the plans
 Elementary field days and since the 6th grade field day went well last year,
adding the other middle school grades this spring and maybe even doing
field trip to Poly to use their fields and having a big field day for the
middle school
 A wellness day event (needs further discussion to shape it)
 Every first Friday walk to school is the goal – working towards that for the
spring (Amy Bonitz)
 Zumba for staff and parents will return
 PTA First Friday coffees may coincide with First Friday walking – could
go well together
 Will Mr. D do a Principal Power Walk – maybe in April? He’ll look into
it
 Mr. D talked about mental and emotional wellness and that he’s planning
an evening workshop for parents around the issue of cutting – at first it
was just for middle school community but our group thought having it
available for all parents would be better. The tentative date for this is 1/9
or 1/10/13.
CONCLUSION

Next meeting time: right now we’ve only scheduled one future meeting date,
2/7/13 at 8:15am in the Principal’s Conference Room.