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Colorado Education Highlights

Colorado Education Highlights features the great work being done in Colorado at schools and districts, BOCES, and other education-related organizations. For more information, email CDE Communications

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CEI helps schools get smart about health and wellness

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

A Lake County Intermediate teacher leads her class through a brain booster activity.

A Lake County Intermediate teacher leads her class through a brain booster activity.

More than 450 Colorado schools volunteered to participate in the 2015-16 Smart Source pilot to assess their school health efforts, finding that 73 percent of participating schools have teams that guide improvements in school health and wellness.

 “For the first time in our state we have information that tells us what our schools are doing to comprehensively impact student health,” said CEI’s Health and Wellness Director Amy Dyett.

Smart Source helps schools track and compare their policies and practices related to school health and safety to other schools around the state in order to address the needs of the whole child.

“It’s great to see that a majority of these teams include membership from a school administrator, which reflects that leadership supports the healthy efforts,” said CEI's Health and Wellness Senior Manager Andrea Pulskamp. 

The results also show that only one in seven participating secondary schools give students a seat at the table when building positive school culture.

“We know that when students feel more connected to school, they are more likely to attend and graduate,” added Pulskamp. “We want to help schools shift ownership of school culture to their students.”

See the 2015-16 Smart Source results here. Stay tuned for the release of the 2016-17 Smart Source Executive Summary in November.

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