Assessing the Food and Fitness Environments of Neighborhood Schools

in Delridge and White Center

Donald Jerome Kramer

A Professional Project submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Master of Urban Planning

University of Washington

2009

Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Urban Design and Planning

 
 
 University of Washington
Department of Urban Design and Planning

This is to certify that I have examined this copy of a professional project by

Donald Jerome Kramer

and have found that it is complete and satisfactory in all respects,

and that any and all revisions required by the final
examining committee have been made.

Committee Members:

__________________________________________________
Branden Born Ph.D.

__________________________________________________
Joaquin Herranz Jr., Ph.D.

___________________________________________________
Erin MacDougall Ph.D.

Date:___________________________

 
 
In presenting this professional project in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a
master’s degree at the University of Washington, I agree that the Library shall make its
copies freely available for inspection. I further agree that extensive copying of this
professional project is allowable only for scholarly purposes, consistent with “fair use” as
prescribed in the U.S. Copyright Law. Any other reproduction for any purposes or by any
means shall not be allowed without my written permission.

Signature ____________________________________________

Date ________________________________________________

 
 
If you have questions or comments about this paper, please contact Don Kramer at
djk5@u.washington.edu.

For more information about the King County Food and Fitness Initiative, visit
www.kcffi.org.

 
 
 University of Washington

ABSTRACT

ASSESSING THE FOOD AND FITNESS ENVIRONMENTS OF

NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS IN DELRIDGE AND WHITE CENTER
By Donald Jerome Kramer, 2009, 85 pages.
Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Branden Born Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Urban
Design and Planning.

The King County Food and Fitness Initiative (KCFFI) is a collaborative of local and
regional organizations and public agencies in King County, Washington, organized to
implement the Food and Fitness Initiative, a multi-year grant from the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation. The Initiative is intended to generate systems-level changes that improve the
food and fitness environments of entire communities. The focus communities of the
KCFFI are Delridge and White Center, adjacent neighborhoods in southwest Seattle and
in unincorporated King County, respectively.

The KCFFI received a two-and-a-half year planning grant from the Kellogg Foundation
in 2006 and must submit a Community Action Plan to the Foundation in September 2009
that outlines how the KCFFI will use the five-year implementation grant. During summer
2008, the author was one of six students from the University of Washington who
participated in a ten-week applied urban planning course in collaboration with the
KCFFI. The final product of the course was a neighborhood-level community food
system assessment and built environment assessment. The course did not focus
specifically on schools.

One purpose of this professional project is to present a survey methodology and survey
tool the KCFFI can use to gather baseline information about food and fitness in schools.
For the purposes of this paper, the food environment includes foods available to students
in schools and nutrition education. Fitness environments include physical education and
 
 
physical activity in school and active transportation to and from school. This paper
includes the author’s methodology and a copy of the survey. Another purpose of this
project is to give the KCFFI a compendium of relevant policies and programs that federal
and state governments and school districts develop, fund and/or regulate that affect food
and fitness at schools. This information provides context about the larger policy
environment within which schools operate.

Based on the author’s research and analysis of these policies and programs, several
potential opportunities may exist for the KCFFI to influence food and fitness in schools
through collaboration with schools or through advocacy for policy changes. This paper
does not, however, make specific recommendations for action. KCFFI leadership will
decide how to plan and implement the initiative. Understanding where these policies and
programs originate, knowing about existing programs at schools in the focus
communities that could be replicated or serve as a resource, and collecting the survey
results can help the KCFFI leaders as they decide what to include in the Community
Action Plan.

 
 
  
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................ iv

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................... v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ vi
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................................................. 1
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 4
KCFFI Background...................................................................................................................... 4
The KCFFI Focus Communities .................................................................................................. 6
Public Agency Health Data and Indicators About the Focus Communities .............................. 11
Schools in the Focus Communities ............................................................................................ 11
Purpose....................................................................................................................................... 17
Audience .................................................................................................................................... 18
Professional Planning Context ................................................................................................... 19
How To Use This Document ..................................................................................................... 21
METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................................................ 22
Developing the Survey ............................................................................................................... 22
Testing the Survey ..................................................................................................................... 25
Training Others to Conduct Survey ........................................................................................... 25
Collecting Survey Results .......................................................................................................... 26
Policy and Program Research Methodology .............................................................................. 28
UW Human Subjects Division Approval of Protocol ................................................................ 29
DISCUSSION OF SURVEY AND POLICY RESEARCH PROCESS ........................................ 30
Reflections on Methodology ...................................................................................................... 30
Initial Observations .................................................................................................................... 35
Survey Questions and Related Policy and Program Sources ..................................................... 37
POLICIES AND PROGRAMS THAT AFFECT SCHOOLS ....................................................... 39
School District Wellness Policies .............................................................................................. 40
Foods Available in Schools ....................................................................................................... 43

i 
 
  
 
Federal School Food Programs............................................................................................. 45
National School Lunch, School Breakfast and Afterschool Snacks Programs ...................... 46
Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program...................................................................................... 48
Summer Food Service Program ............................................................................................. 50
Competitive Foods ................................................................................................................. 51
Pricing ................................................................................................................................... 53
Drinking Water ...................................................................................................................... 54
Food Environment Near Schools ............................................................................................... 55
Nutrition Education .................................................................................................................... 56
School Gardens ...................................................................................................................... 58
Physical Education ..................................................................................................................... 60
Recess ........................................................................................................................................ 62
Community Access to School Recreation Facilities .................................................................. 64
Active Transportation ................................................................................................................ 65
Safe Routes to School Program ............................................................................................. 67
Safe Walking Route Maps for Focus Community Schools ..................................................... 71
Summary of Potential Opportunities for KCFFI........................................................................ 75
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................. 81
Lessons Learned......................................................................................................................... 81
Potential Opportunities .............................................................................................................. 84
REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................. 87
APPENDIX .................................................................................................................................... 93
KCFFI Collaborative Partners, as of May 12, 2008 .................................................................. 94
KCFFI Leadership Council Members, as of May 11, 2008 ....................................................... 95
KCFFI Assessment Team Members, Affiliation and Focus, as of January 2009 ...................... 96
KCFFI School Survey Interviewer Instructions......................................................................... 97
KCFFI School Survey ................................................................................................................ 99
Oral Consent Statement for Interviewees ................................................................................ 108
School District Contact Information ........................................................................................ 109
State and Other Agency Contact Information .......................................................................... 110

ii 
 
  
 
Safe Routes to School/Active Transportation Resources......................................................... 111
Highline Public Schools nutrition standards ............................................................................ 112
Seattle Public Schools distribution and sales of competitive foods procedure ........................ 114
Seattle Public Schools nutrition education procedure.............................................................. 118 

   

iii 
 
  
 
LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1. Map of KCFFI focus communities. ................................................................................ 10

Figure 2. Map of schools in KCFFI focus communities. ............................................................... 14
Figure 3. Detail of survey results collection file ............................................................................ 27
Figure 4. Safe walking route map, Roxhill Elementary School..................................................... 74
Figure 5. Safe walking route map, Mount View Elementary School. ........................................... 75 

iv 
 
  
 
LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table 1. Public schools in KCFFI focus communities. .................................................................. 12

Table 2. Student demographics. ..................................................................................................... 15
Table 3. Student demographics: ethnicity. ..................................................................................... 16
Table 4. Student demographics: special programs......................................................................... 17
Table 6. Survey questions and related policy and program sources. ............................................. 37
Table 7. Activities to encourage biking and walking at three focus community schools. ............. 69 

v 
 
  
 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Prepared for:
King County Food & Fitness Initiative.

Special thanks to:

• Branden Born Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Urban Design and Planning, College of
Built Environments, University of Washington.
• Joaquin Herranz, Jr. Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Public Affairs, Evans School of
Public Affairs, University of Washington.
• Erin MacDougall Ph.D., Healthy Eating and Active Living Program Manager, KCFFI
Project Director, Public Health Seattle – King County.

Thanks also to staff from Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association, White

Center Community Development Association, Youngstown Cultural Arts Center,
Highline Public Schools, and Seattle Public Schools who helped with this project.

vi 
 
 1 
 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This professional project paper presents my policy research and the school survey I
developed for the King County Food and Fitness Initiative (KCFFI) in winter and spring
2009. The KCFFI is a collaborative of community organizations, citywide and regional
organizations and public agencies organized for the purpose of implementing the Food
and Fitness Initiative, a multi-year grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The Food
and Fitness Initiative is intended to generate systems-level changes that improve the food
and fitness environments of entire communities.

The KCFFI focus communities are Delridge and White Center, two adjacent
neighborhoods. Delridge is in southwest Seattle and White Center is in unincorporated
King County. The KCFFI Co-conveners used a Request for Qualifications process to
select these two neighborhoods based on three criteria: a history of food and fitness
efforts, a history of collaboration and evidence of community outreach experience.

The KCFFI received a two-and-a-half year planning grant from the Kellogg Foundation
in 2006 and must submit a Community Action Plan to the Foundation in September 2009
that outlines how the KCFFI will use the five-year implementation grant. During summer
2008, I was one of six students from the University of Washington (UW) Department of
Urban Design and Planning (UDP) who participated in a ten-week applied urban
planning studio course in collaboration with the KCFFI. The final product of the studio
was a document titled Food For Thought: Groundwork for the King County Food and
Fitness Initiative, which included our neighborhood-level community food system
assessment and built environment assessment for the KCFFI (University of Washington
2008). Our assessments did not focus specifically on the food and fitness environments
within neighborhood schools.

 
 
 2 
 
One purpose of this professional project is to provide the KCFFI a school survey and
methodology Initiative participants can use to gather site-specific information about the
food and fitness environments at schools in the focus communities that they can consider
while developing the Community Action Plan summer. For the purposes of this paper,
the food environment includes foods available to students in schools and nutrition
education. Fitness environments include physical education, physical activity and active
transportation to and from school. The other purpose of this project is to give the
Initiative information about policies and programs developed by entities outside the
schools that affect the food and fitness environments within schools.

This paper includes the methodology I used to develop and test the school survey, how I
trained community members to use the survey and a compendium of relevant policies and
programs that affect food and fitness in schools. The scope of my professional project
included developing and testing the survey, training community members to conduct the
survey and compiling and analyzing relevant school-related policies and programs. Due
to the timing of this project, only survey results from the three schools I surveyed in April
and May 2009 were available at the time I prepared this paper. I have included in the
paper a method KCFFI participants can use to compile and evaluate the survey results
they collect this summer. The paper also includes a thorough reference list and appendix
that provide additional sources of information for the KCFFI.

I was unable to find a similar document that includes a compendium of federal, state and
Seattle and Highline school district policies that affect the schools in the KCFFI focus
communities. Nor did a survey tool exist that specifically addresses the range of topics of
interest to the KCFFI. In short, this document and the survey are unique in their relevance
to this particular Initiative, but I believe the methodology I used could be replicated
elsewhere to produce a similar paper about school food and fitness environments in other
focus communities.

 
 
 3 
 
The primary audiences for this paper include the following groups involved in the
KCFFI: Leadership Council, focus community lead organizations, Co-conveners,
assessment team and evaluators, and the youth agency coordinator. Each of these groups
will be described in the Introduction. Other potential audiences include the KCFFI
Collaborative Partners, which include representatives of 60 community-based groups and
other organizations from throughout the county who are concerned about food and
fitness. An additional potential audience may be the eight other Food and Fitness
collaboratives around the U.S. that received funding from the Kellogg Foundation.

This paper includes the following sections:

• Executive Summary.
• Introduction.
• Description of the methodology I used to develop and test the survey and evaluate
the survey results.
• Description of the methodology I used to collect and analyze the policy
information.
• Policies and programs that affect school food and fitness environments.
• Conclusion.
• References.
• Appendix.
In addition to this paper, I will give the KCFFI Co-conveners an electronic copy of the
survey, consent statement, survey instructions, and an Excel file for the survey results.

 
 
 4 
 
INTRODUCTION

This section provides background information about the KCFFI, a description of the
geographic area and demographics of the KCFFI focus communities, the purpose and
intended audience of this professional project, a description of the planning context of
this professional project, and a brief note about how to use this document.
 
KCFFI Background
The King County Food and Fitness Initiative (KCFFI) is a collaborative formed in 2006
to plan for and implement a five-year Food and Fitness Initiative grant from the W.K.
Kellogg Foundation. The Foundation selected nine sites across the United States to
participate in this Initiative. The Food and Fitness Initiative is one of several W.K.
Kellogg Foundation programs and is consistent with the Foundation’s overall mission:
“The W.K. Kellogg Foundation supports children, families, and communities as they
strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as
individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society” (W.K. Kellogg
Foundation n.d.).

The Kellogg Foundation’s focus for the Food & Fitness Initiative is systems-level
changes that improve the food and fitness environments of entire communities (W.K.
Kellogg Foundation n.d.). Locally, the KCFFI vision follows this systems-level focus by
looking at the whole community: “Creating vibrant communities that support access to
locally grown, healthy, affordable food and safe and inviting places for physical activity
and play—for everyone” (KCFFI 2008) The KCFFI mission is "to foster collaborative
leadership among diverse community partners to co-create long-term, innovative
strategies to realize our vision of equitable access to resources and choices that promote
health. To achieve our goals, we actively engage with communities and youth in
planning, decision making, and fun activities" (KCFFI 2008)

 
 
 5 
 
The KCFFI is currently in the two-and-a-half year planning phase of the Initiative.
Initiative leaders are preparing a Community Action Plan to submit to the Kellogg
Foundation this summer in preparation for the eight-year implementation and evaluation
phase of the Initiative. If the Kellogg Foundation approves the KCFFI Community
Action Plan, between two and four million dollars will be available from the Kellogg
Foundation to implement and evaluate the plan.

The KCFFI leadership is structured as several groups: the Leadership Council, two focus
community lead organizations, Co-conveners, an assessment team and evaluators, and a
youth agency coordinator.

The 18-member Leadership Council includes residents of Delridge and White Center and
representatives from organizations focused on food and fitness (see Appendix for a
member list). The role of the Leadership Council is to offer guidance and leadership in
the planning phase of the Initiative (KCFFI 2008).

The focus community lead organizations are the Delridge Neighborhoods Development
Association (DNDA) and the White Center Community Development Association
(WCCDA). The youth coordinator is the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, an
independently operated branch of the DNDA. These organizations conduct outreach to
the two focus communities.

The Co-conveners of the KCFFI are staff members from Public Health Seattle – King
County and WSU King County Extension. The role of the Co-conveners is to coordinate
the overall management of the Initiative and Kellogg Foundation grant, interactions with
the foundation, and the Initiative planning and implementation process. My primary
contact for this project is Erin MacDougall, Project Director for KCFFI at Public Health
Seattle – King County.

 
 
 6 
 
The ten member assessment team is comprised of faculty, researchers and staff from UW,
WSU, Public Health Seattle – King County, and WSU King County Extension (see
Appendix for a member list).

Other organizations that are part of the KCFFI are Collaborative Partners. KCFFI
describes this group of 60 organizations as “a cross section of organizations and
leadership including grassroots groups, community-based organizations and institutions
representing the local food system and physical activity constituencies, public health and
health care, education, recreation, economic development, transportation, urban and rural
planning groups, faith-based organizations, corporate sector, and employer groups.” (see
Appendix for an organization list). The role of this group is to help guide and set the
Initiative agenda (KCFFI 2008)

The KCFFI Focus Communities

The KCFFI site selection committee selected Delridge and White Center based on a
Request for Qualifications (RFQ) process. The RFQ document states that one community
will be in Seattle and the other in South King County (KCFFI 2007 2). The RFQ includes
three criteria on which applicants were judged (KCFFI 2007 3):
• History of food and fitness-related efforts - evidence of past work related to
KCFFI goals of promoting access to healthy, affordable food and creating safe
and convenient places for physical activity.
• History of collaboration - evidence of community partners and residents working
well together including how long and how effective the partnerships and resulting
accomplishments were.
• Community engagement - evidence of effectively involving diverse residents and
community members in past projects, and quality and feasibility of plans to
engage residents in KCFFI.

 
 
 7 
 
During summer 2008, I was one of six students from the University of Washington (UW)
Department of Urban Design and Planning (UDP) who participated in a ten-week applied
urban planning studio course in collaboration with the KCFFI. The final product of the
studio was a report titled Food for Thought: Groundwork for the King County Food and
Fitness Initiative, that includes our neighborhood-level community food system
assessment and built environment assessment for the KCFFI (University of Washington
2008). The Food for Thought report includes a detailed description of the KCFFI focus
communities that is excerpted below (University of Washington 2008 6):
Delridge: A Bird’s Eye View
The Delridge neighborhood is located on the southern edge of Seattle and
is adjacent to and north of White Center. The greater Delridge area
includes 36,585 residents (University of Washington 2006, App. 5.2). The
neighborhood boundary, as defined by the Delridge Neighborhoods
Development Association (DNDA), is the area south of Southwest
Spokane Street and the West Seattle Bridge, east of 35th Avenue
Southwest, west of 1st Avenue South and West Marginal Way, and north
of Southwest Roxbury Street (Delridge Neighborhoods Development
Association n.d.). A 2006 UW Planning Studio report (University of
Washington 2006 2-3) notes:

“Delridge is an ethnically diverse community; minority

groups comprise about half the population. Incomes also
vary extensively, with the average household income in
Delridge just slightly lower than state and county figures. . .
.Delridge is most strongly characterized by residential
neighborhoods, but it is also home to a variety of large and
small businesses. While single-family homes are most
common, townhomes and apartment buildings also have a
notable and growing presence. Amongst the homes and
businesses is extensive green space, including unique
natural amenities such as Longfellow Creek and the Legacy
Trail. . . A significant asset of the Delridge neighborhood is
its extensive network of open space, trails and staircases. . .
The current housing market in Delridge is in a rapid state of
transition, with older single-family homes and apartment
buildings being demolished and replaced with townhouses
and four-plexes. This transition is threatening the
availability of rental units and producing new housing that
is outside of the price range of the average Delridge
 
 
 8 
 
resident. With the recent growth and development along
Delridge Way, business owners and community members
are increasingly optimistic about business growth.”

The Seattle Times also described the changes occurring in Delridge as

housing becomes increasingly unaffordable for many residents of a
neighborhood that has traditionally been home to blue-collar workers and
immigrants (Young 2007).

White Center: A Bird’s Eye View

White Center is located immediately south of Delridge, between Seattle
and the city of Burien (Figure 1). The population of the neighborhood is
20,975 (Public Health Seattle – King County n.d.). White Center includes
approximately 3.67 square miles of unincorporated area in King County.
Public Health Seattle – King County identifies White Center as the area
west of State Route 509 and north of Southwest Roxbury Street, north of
Southwest 126th Street and extending west to 30th Avenue Southwest. A
2007 UW Planning Studio report (University of Washington 2007 2)
notes:

“The population of White Center includes an extremely

diverse working class, with people of color making up
nearly 50% of the community. In addition, over a quarter of
the residents in the area are people under the age of 18.
This vibrant character and unique diversity is White
Center’s greatest asset, but the community faces substantial
challenges as well. Income, employment, and education
levels in White Center are lower on average than those in
the rest of King County, and crime and health problems
tend to be higher than elsewhere in the county.
Compounding these problems is the fact that White Center
is an unincorporated area of King County and does not
have the resources to address many of these issues.
…White Center is a neighborhood in transition due to
inherent pressures from population growth, poverty,
annexation discussions, and the threat of gentrification.
Maintaining the diversity and character of the
neighborhood in the midst of change will be a challenge,
yet the community has clearly indicated that preserving the
unique character of the neighborhood is vitally important.”

 
 
 9 
 
Neighborhood Boundaries 1
For the purposes of this report, the class used the Health Planning Area
(HPA) boundaries defined by Public Health Seattle – King County, as
some of the health data is collected at that level of analysis and HPAs can
serve as rough approximations of the formal neighborhoods. However, the
streets used to define neighborhood areas for the HPA may differ from the
formal boundaries.”

                                                            
1
This report uses the same boundaries that the class used in summer 2008.
 
 
 10 
 

Figure 1. Map of KCFFI focus communities.

 
 
 11 
 
Public Agency Health Data and Indicators About the Focus Communities
The Washington Department of Health, Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction,
Department of Social and Health Services/Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse,
Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development, Family Policy Council,
and Liquor Control Board collaborate on the Healthy Youth Survey (HYS), which covers
several topics, including diet and physical activity (Washington Dept. of Health n.d.).
Students in the sixth, eighth, tenth, and twelfth grades completed the survey in 2002,
2004 and 2006. State and county-level data are available online. School district-level and
school-level data are available at the request of the district superintendent (Beck 2009). 2

Public Health Seattle – King County publishes community health indicators for the
county, but most indicators are about the adult population, not school-age children and
youth. A summary of these indicators for the KCFFI focus communities is included in the
2008 Food for Thought document (University of Washington 2008).

Schools in the Focus Communities

The focus communities include a total of 15 public schools: 11 elementary schools (ES),
two middle schools (MS) and two high schools (HS) (see Table 1). In addition to the
schools in the KCFFI focus communities, I added a 16th school, West Seattle High
School, to the schools list for the purposes of this paper and the school survey based on
input from youth at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center who attend the school. The schools
are in two schools districts: Delridge schools are in the Seattle Public Schools district,
and White Center schools are in the Highline Public Schools district. Figure 2 below
shows the geographic distribution of the 16 schools.

                                                            
2
I was unable to locate a copy of school-district-level or school-level reports from either district as of the
time of this writing.
 
 
 12 
 
Table 1. Public schools in KCFFI focus communities.

School School District

Beverly Park Elementary School Highline
Cascade Middle School Highline
Cedarhurst Elementary School Highline
Evergreen High School Campus Highline
Hilltop Elementary Highline
Mount View Elementary School Highline
Southern Heights Elementary School Highline
White Center Heights Elementary School Highline
Cooper Elementary School 3 Seattle
Denny Middle School Seattle
Highland Park Elementary School Seattle
Roxhill Elementary School Seattle
Sanislo Elementary School Seattle
Sealth High School Seattle
West Seattle Elementary School Seattle
West Seattle High School Seattle

The Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) is the state

education agency for Washington. OSPI publishes annual school and school district-level
demographics and academic performance data. The demographic data from OSPI in
Tables 2, 3 and 4 below are about students at schools in the KCFFI focus communities
(Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction 2008). OSPI data reflect changes in
student demographics in both districts during the past five years. Increases or decreases
of five percent or more are highlighted in green in Table 2 to show the highest changes in
student demographics. In some cases, the change is greater than ten percent. Similarly,
increases or decreases of five percent or more in the percentage of students participating
in the free and reduced meal program are highlighted in table 3. 4 In two cases, the

                                                            
3
The Seattle Public Schools Board approved a Capacity Management Plan in January 2009 that will close
Cooper Elementary School next fall and relocate students to other sites. For the purposes of this
professional project, Cooper Elementary remains on the list and map.
4
I was unable to compare 2002-2003 and 2007-2008 data for percentage of students in special education,
transitional bilingual programs or migrant status because the 2002-2003 data reports for all the schools in
the KCFFI focus communities list 0 for those three categories.
 
 
 13 
 
percentage increased more than ten percent and in one case the percentage decreased
more than ten percent.

 
 
 14 
 

Figure 2. Map of schools in KCFFI focus communities.

 
 
 15 
 
Table 2. Student demographics.
Student Demographics
(2002-2003 and 2007-2008)
School Students Male Female
2002- 2007- 2002- 2007- 2002- 2007-
03 08 03 08 03 08
Highline School District 17,735 17,331 51.5% 51.4% 48.5% 48.6%
Beverly Park ES 537 455 48.8% 45.5% 51.2% 54.5%
Cascade MS 709 550 50.9% 54.5% 49.1% 45.5%
Cedarhurst ES 330 433 55.8% 53.3% 44.2% 46.7%
Evergreen HS Campus 1,183 4* 51.6% 25.0% 48.4% 75.0%
Hilltop ES 660 563 50.3% 51.2% 49.7% 48.8%
Mount View ES 475 595 54.3% 48.2% 45.7% 51.8%
Southern Heights ES 319 363 48.0% 52.9% 52.0% 47.1%
White Center Heights ES 404 456 50.0% 52.0% 50.0% 48.0%
Seattle Public Schools 47,853 45,581 51.3% 51.0% 48.7% 49.0%
Cooper ES 368 266 50.3% 48.5% 49.7% 51.5%
Denny MS 814 622 50.0% 50.5% 50.0% 49.5%
Highland Park ES 429 405 51.7% 52.3% 48.3% 47.7%
Roxhill ES 302 253 57.9% 57.7% 42.1% 42.3%
Sanislo ES 324 312 52.2% 47.1% 47.8% 52.9%
Sealth HS 978 913 50.0% 49.8% 50.0% 50.2%
West Seattle ES 282 271 50.0% 55.7% 50.0% 44.3%
West Seattle HS 1,053 1,240 54.3% 52.4% 45.7% 47.6%

Highlighted cells = >10% increase or decrease between 2002-2003 and 2007-2008

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 16 
 
Table 3. Student demographics: ethnicity.

Student Demographics – Ethnicity, as percent of enrolled students

(2002-2003 and 2007-2008)
School Am. Asian Black Hispanic White
Indian/AK
Native
2002 2007 2002 2007 2002 2007 2002 2007 2002 2007
-03 -08 -03 -08 -03 -08 -03 -08 -03 -08
Highline 2.1 2.0 20.7 21.2 13.3 14.5 17.9 27.0 45.9 35.2
School
District
Beverly Park 2.0 1.3 28.9 16.0 11.5 23.5 33.3 38.0 24.2 21.1
ES
Cascade MS 3.0 2.0 29.9 35.8 13.8 14.5 14.4 30.9 38.9 16.7
Cedarhurst 1.5 1.6 21.8 23.3 7.3 11.1 19.7 40.0 49.7 23.1
ES
Evergreen 2.1 25.0 34.3 50.0 12.5 ND 16.4 ND 34.7 25.0
HS Campus
Hilltop ES 3.9 1.6 24.5 25.4 17.0 13.7 20.9 42.6 33.6 16.7
Mount View 3.6 2.4 36.8 35.8 9.7 14.6 26.3 31.3 23.6 15.6
ES
Southern 0.6 0.6 22.3 31.4 9.4 9.9 24.1 34.2 43.6 23.1
Heights ES
White Center 0.5 1.5 45.0 43.0 21.5 20.0 19.3 23.9 13.6 11.6
Heights ES
Seattle 2.0 2.1 23.3 22.1 23.0 21.3 11.0 11.6 40.1 42.8
Public
Schools
Cooper ES 1.6 0.4 27.4 19.2 34.5 42.1 17.9 20.3 18.5 18.0
Denny MS 4.4 4.5 22.1 20.4 23.5 26.7 21.3 23.0 28.7 25.4
Highland 3.3 2.5 35.2 30.9 15.6 18.3 27.3 31.9 18.6 16.5
Park ES
Roxhill ES 2.0 2.8 21.2 22.5 22.5 23.7 33.1 37.2 21.2 13.8
Sanislo ES 3.1 1.9 34.9 27.6 19.1 16.0 15.1 11.9 27.8 42.6
Sealth HS 3.1 3.6 26.4 21.2 17.5 29.1 22.6 22.0 30.5 24.0
West Seattle 2.8 4.1 30.5 21.8 39.0 33.6 19.1 23.2 8.5 17.3
ES
West Seattle 3.3 2.5 23.2 22.2 14.6 16.0 11.2 15.5 47.7 43.8
HS
ND = No data
Highlighted cells = >5% increase or decrease between 2002-2003 and 2007-2008
 
 
 17 
 
Table 4. Student demographics: special programs.

Student Demographics – Special Programs, as percentage of students

(2002-2003 and 2007-2008)
School Free/Reduced Special Ed Transitional Migrant
Price Meals Bilingual
2002- 2007- 2002- 2007- 2002- 2007- 2002- 2007-
03 08 03 08 03 08 03 08
Highline School 50.5 56.7 11.4 12.6 10.7 18.6 0.0 0.0
District
Beverly Park ES 71.3 79.0 0.0 11.2 0.0 28.5 0.0 0.0
Cascade MS 59.2 72.8 0.0 15.3 0.0 18.3 0.0 0.0
Cedarhurst ES 56.0 71.0 0.0 11.8 0.0 33.7 0.0 0.0
Evergreen HS 53.6 ND 0.0 ND 0.0 ND 0.0 ND
Campus
Hilltop ES 63.2 72.0 0.0 11.3 0.0 31.7 0.0 0.0
Mount View ES 72.1 71.1 0.0 14.8 0.0 31.8 0.0 0.0
Southern Heights ES 59.7 69.2 0.0 14.0 0.0 26.6 0.0 0.0
White Center Heights 88.1 85.5 0.0 11.7 0.0 35.5 0.0 0.0
ES
Seattle Public 41.9 40.5 13.0 13.9 12.1 11.8 0.4 0.5
Schools
Cooper ES 78.3 79.5 0.0 21.2 0.0 33.2 0.0 1.5
Denny MS 65.3 64.1 0.0 16.7 0.0 12.2 0.0 0.5
Highland Park ES 66.7 74.0 0.0 11.7 0.0 25.7 0.0 1.2
Roxhill ES 84.7 77.4 0.0 29.6 0.0 34.3 0.0 1.5
Sanislo ES 59.6 50.2 0.0 9.2 0.0 19.4 0.0 0.0
Sealth HS 52.3 60.9 0.0 13.4 0.0 17.9 0.0 3.1
West Seattle ES 97.1 78.9 0.0 25.9 0.0 32.3 0.0 0.0
West Seattle HS 34.3 34.2 0.0 11.8 0.0 7.6 0.0 0.2
ND = No data
Highlighted cells = >5% increase or decrease between 2002-2003 and 2007-2008

Purpose
The purpose of this professional project is to provide the Co-conveners, focus community
lead organizations, and the Leadership Council a survey tool that can be used at the 16
schools, a way to collect the survey results, training to individuals interested in
conducting the survey, and a compendium of the various policies set by agencies outside
the schools that affect the food and fitness environments in the schools. Like the survey,
 
 
 18 
 
the policy section is intended to give the Initiative participants a snapshot of the existing
conditions and context within which schools operate with regard to food and fitness.

The information from the survey will give the KCFFI baseline information about a range
of topics related to food and fitness in the schools. This survey tool can then be used in
the future to assess changes in the school environments and progress toward the KCFFI
goals. The immediate goal is for the KCFFI leaders to have information about schools
they can use as they develop the KCFFI Community Action Plan during summer 2009.

The Kellogg Foundation recognizes the role schools can play in child health and
development: “The school system domain, especially the institutional policies that govern
site selection, curriculum, and off-hours use of school facilities, can either encourage or
inhibit physical activity among children” (W.K. Kellogg Foundation 2008 1). In addition,
the KCFFI values include “meaningful youth participation”(KCFFI 2008). Given this
focus on schools, children and youth, the KCFFI should understand the food and fitness
environment in the schools in Delridge and White Center as the leadership develops the
Community Action Plan and for future implementation and evaluation in the KCFFI
focus communities.

Audience
The primary audiences for this paper are the KCFFI Leadership Council, focus
community lead organizations, youth coordinator, Co-conveners, and assessment team. A
secondary audience is the KCFFI Collaborative Partners, which include representatives
of 60 community-based groups and other organizations from throughout King County
who are concerned about food and fitness. Other potential audiences may be the Food
and Fitness collaboratives at the other eight sites in the U.S.

 
 
 19 
 
Professional Planning Context
This project is consistent with professional planning practice. This paper includes
analysis of existing policies and programs and a method for community members to
gather information about existing conditions in the focus community schools. Existing
conditions reports and state of the community reports provide a basis for planning
processes, community participation in planning and for future assessment of progress
(Berke, Godschalk et al. 2006). The information community members gather using the
survey in this paper can provide both a baseline or snapshot of existing conditions and a
way to assess changes in the school food and fitness environments in the future.

The policy and program section of this paper gives KCFFI leaders additional information
about policies and programs that affect food and fitness environments in schools, and
may offer potential areas for systems-level change. Gathering and analyzing information
about community characteristics are part of many planning processes (Hoch 2000),

In addition, I trained four community members during this project to conduct the school
surveys, rather than conducting surveys at all 16 schools myself. This is consistent with
planning norms that support public participation in the planning process and the KCFFI
mission to “foster collaborative leadership among diverse community partners to co-
create long-term, innovative strategies to realize our vision of equitable access to
resources and choices that promote health. To achieve our goals, we actively engage with
communities and youth in planning, decision making, and fun activities” (KCFFI 2008).

Public participation in planning is not new and strategies and purposes vary. Arnstein
(1969) describes a ladder of citizen participation, on which participation can move from
simply informing and consulting citizens to partnerships and citizen control of the
planning process. Kretzmann et al (1993) focus on including community members and
organizations as a way to build community visions and strategies based on existing
community assets. Berke et al (2006) describe collaborative planning in the context of
 
 
 20 
 
consensus-building processes and that inclusive participation is one of the distinguishing
characteristics of consensus-building. Martz (1995), Burby (2003) and Sirianni (2007)
each describe the positive impact of public participation in local planning on
implementation of plans.

One form of public participation is participatory action research (PAR), a method by

which community members conduct planning, research or information gathering. PAR is
“a way for professional researchers and community residents to collaborate on
investigations into issues - such as housing, healthcare, and environmental conservation -
with the goal of achieving positive social change. PAR values both scholarly and
community-based perspectives to address questions related to living conditions, services,
and policy, in order to make life better for people living in a given community, as defined
by that community” (Center for Cultural Understanding and Change n.d.).

A study of the use of PAR in building healthy communities describes a distinctive aspect
of PAR as “not the methods employed, which may be either quantitative or qualitative,
but the active involvement of the people whose lives are affected by the issue under study
in every phase of the process” (Minkler 2000 192) and characterizes PAR as:
• Participatory.
• Cooperative, engaging community members and researchers in a joint process in
which both contribute equally.
• A co-learning process for researchers and community members.
• A method for systems development and local community capacity building.
• An empowering process through which participants can increase control over their
lives by nurturing community strengths and problem-solving abilities; and a way to
balance research and action.
The methodology I used to develop the survey included input and feedback from
community lead organizations. The survey implementation includes youth from

 
 
 21 
 
Youngstown Cultural Arts Center. Representatives of the community lead organizations
will be responsible for collecting the survey results and working with the Co-conveners
to summarize the results for use in the Initiative planning process this summer. That
planning process includes the community lead organizations. These methods are
consistent with the descriptions of PAR and public participation described above.

How To Use This Document

This paper includes a detailed description of the methodology I used to develop the
school survey. Readers can find in the Appendix a copy of the survey instructions,
consent statement for interviewees and the survey itself. The policies and programs
section of the paper will give the reader background information on relevant policies and
programs that will be useful - along with the survey results - to get a better picture of the
overall environment within which schools operate. Sources are cited throughout the paper
and readers can use the Reference list to find more details about the sources. In addition
to the survey and related documents, the Appendix includes contact information for
relevant local and state agencies. The reader can use these contact lists to find additional
information about specific topics in the paper.

 
 
 22 
 
METHODOLOGY

This section describes the methods I used to develop the school survey, the training for
community members, and the policies section. Because survey results from several
schools will be available after I complete this professional project, I have also included a
method the KCFFI can use to compile survey results as additional data becomes available
this summer.

Developing the Survey

The survey included in this report (see Appendix) is based on several sources and on
feedback from KCFFI leaders who reviewed the draft survey during winter 2009. Sara
Coulter, a graduate student in the public health program at UW, compiled a draft list of
school-related questions and topics in spring 2008 based on her review of assessment
guidance from the Kellogg Foundation, information from KCFFI Project Director Erin
MacDougall and from research Ms. Coulter conducted with two other UW graduate
students, Kara Martin and Torence Powell, also in spring 2008 (Coulter 2008) under the
guidance of UW Assistant Professor Branden Born. That research was the groundwork
for some of the neighborhood-level food system and built environment assessments that
were the subject of the summer 2008 planning studio course, also overseen by Born,
described in the Executive Summary. As noted, that studio course did not focus
specifically on the food and fitness environment in schools.

My work on this survey used this previous research as a starting point. Based on
discussions with MacDougall and Born, I first separated the site-specific questions and
topics from those that are school district, state or federal government level issues. My
draft survey included all the topics on the initial list I received at the start of my work on
this project in winter 2009. At that point in the planning process for the Initiative, the
participants had not yet decided where to focus the Initiative in the Community Action

 
 
 23 
 
Plan, and wanted information about a broad range of topics related to school food and
fitness environments. Future surveys may focus on fewer topics with greater depth.

I contacted KCFFI assessment team members in December 2008 and January 2009 to get
their input. The assessment team is comprised of individuals with professional and
academic research experience and assessment expertise. This input was necessary to
ensure the survey format, content and scope will generate information the Initiative needs
in a way that is also replicable at all 16 schools.

At the suggestion of several assessment team members, I also looked at existing surveys
and assessment tools to find possible questions or formats that might be useful for this
survey. I reviewed assessment tools on the National Cancer Institute Risk Factor
Monitoring and Methods web site, the Michigan State University Extension Team
Nutrition web site, the School Health Policies and Programs (SHPPS) questionnaires and
School Health Index (SHI) from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), the Family Cook School Community Food Assessment toolkit, assessments the
John C. Stalker Institute of Food and Nutrition at Framingham State College (Mass.)
developed, a New Mexico Department of Transportation assessment tool for
neighborhood streets, and a Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) survey of
school vending machines.

I also looked at assessment guidance from the Kellogg Foundation and other questions
that were the result of research conducted by the three graduate students working with
Professor Born in spring 2008. The purpose of this additional research was to find
existing questions or formats that others have used to assess school environments that
may also be useful in this setting.

All of these other assessment tools and guidance provided some suggestions for specific
questions or ways to format questions and answers, but the time limitation to conduct the
 
 
 24 
 
KCFFI survey and the breadth of topics in the KCFFI survey required a limited number
of questions for each topic. Many of these other assessment tools are very extensive but
only cover one topic, such as the CSPI survey about vending machines or the SHPP
assessments which cover several topics. The CDC estimates each topic in the SHPP to
take approximately an hour. Other evaluation tools, such as the Michigan State
University Extension evaluation tools, are more subjective or qualitative evaluations.

Based on conversations with community leads and with Donna Johnson, an assessment
team member and UW faculty member who has conducted research at schools, I made
every effort to shorten the survey so that interviewers would need no more than 45-60
minutes to conduct the entire survey, which covers a range of topics about food and
fitness, school facilities for students, existing programs, and community access to school
facilities. I tried to minimize the number of open-ended questions because of the expected
time limitations and also tried to include more objective measures of the school’s
characteristics so the results would be easier to compare with future survey results.

I drafted an initial set of questions in February 2009 that I sent to the assessment team
and Co-conveners to review. By March 2009, the KCFFI had also developed a detailed
list of potential strategies and tactics the Initiative may consider as it develops the
Community Action Plan (Krieger, MacDougall et al. 2009). That list includes, but is not
limited to, school-related strategies and tactics. I revised the draft survey in March 2009
to include questions based on specific school-related strategies and tactics in that
document to ensure the survey addresses issues of interest to the Initiative. While that
document is not the same thing as the Community Action Plan, it was an early effort by
the Initiative leaders to begin identifying potential strategies and tactics. All topics in the
potential school-related tactics are consistent with the topics I already covered in the draft
survey, but I added some new questions based specifically on the potential tactics.

 
 
 25 
 
The review process continued for several drafts until April 2009. The KCFFI Project
Coordinator mailed and e-mailed a letter from me to the principal each of the 15 schools
in the focus communities in March 2009 to let the principals know about the upcoming
KCFFI school survey. 5 In April 2009, I contacted three schools in Delridge and White
Center to request meetings with the principals so that I could conduct the survey myself
to understand how the survey works and make adjustments to the survey as needed before
giving the final version to the community lead organizations. The community lead
organizations will then identify interested community members who will then conduct
the survey at the remaining 13 schools this summer.

Testing the Survey

I conducted the survey with the principal at Sanislo Elementary on April 10, 2009, the
principal at Roxhill Elementary on April 17, 2009 and the Physical Education instructor
at Southern Heights Elementary on May 12, 2009. I selected three schools so that I could
test the survey at schools in each of the two school districts. I chose three schools where,
based on feedback from the community lead organizations, the community leads did not
already have good contacts, so that the community leads could focus on schools where
they might be able to more quickly set up appointments and conduct the survey later
based on existing relationships with the school principals or other staff.

Training Others to Conduct Survey

I met with the Founding Director and staff from Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, and
the KCFFI Project Director on May 4, 2009 at the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center to
provide a brief overview for the community leads about the survey purpose, content,
instructions for conducting the survey, and to discuss which schools they would be
willing to survey. In addition, I met with Youngstown staff and four youth at the center
on May 13, 2009 to review the survey purpose, how to set up meetings with school

                                                            
5
I added West Seattle High School to the schools list in May (see Introduction).
 
 
 26 
 
administrators and answer any questions they had about survey questions or the
procedure for conducting the survey. Each of the community lead organizations is
responsible for community outreach for the Initiative and, therefore, will identify staff or
volunteers to conduct the survey at the 13 remaining schools in the focus communities.

Collecting Survey Results

I created a spreadsheet file in Microsoft Excel with two sheets: one for Seattle schools
and another for Highline schools. Within each sheet, I grouped schools by grade level
(elementary, middle or high schools) I grouped the schools this way for multiple reasons:
each district has separate policies that affect school operations, schools differ from the
elementary to high school levels, and including all 16 schools in one sheet would result in
a spreadsheet too wide to print. The file includes spaces for all 41 survey questions, space
for additional comments from the interviews that were not included in the survey answers
(e.g. additional comments following a question with a Yes/No answer), and space for the
interviewer observations of crosswalks and sidewalks around the school.

The individual(s) who summarize the data after it is in the file will need to manually
summarize the responses. Summarizing the responses in a narrative format should be
feasible since there are only 16 schools. In addition, I found no easy way to electronically
summarize the answers.

Figure 3 below is a detail view of the Excel file I created for the purpose of collecting and
storing the school survey results for all 16 schools. I will compile survey results in this
file in May and give an electronic copy of the file to the KCFFI Project Director in early
June 2009. Excel should be sufficient because I am using the program primarily as a
table. Excel is easy to use for this purpose and is a widely available program. A database
is unnecessary for the collection of this survey information because of the small number
of schools and difficulty finding a commonly used and easy to use database program.

 
 
 27 
 

 
Figure 3. Detail of survey results collection file

The KCFFI has developed a draft of potential strategies and tactics the Initiative may
focus on in the Community Action Plan, including several school-related tactics (KCFFI
2009). Many of the questions in the latest version of the survey are based on specific
tactics in that document so that the survey results will provide information that helps the
Initiative decide which strategies and tactics to include in the Community Action Plan
this summer. Readers can focus on the specific survey questions and results related to
school gardens, for example, and, based on the survey results for those particular
questions, decide how to prioritize the potential tactics related to school gardens that the
Initiative leaders developed in March 2009.

I did not develop a method of scoring or ranking answers that allows the Initiative to
calculate an overall score or rating of the school. The purpose of the survey data is to
provide baseline information about a range of school characteristics that, while related in
a broad sense, are difficult to score that still allows the reader to differentiate in a
meaningful way (e.g. Is a school with a garden but no Safe Routes to School program

 
 
 28 
 
“better” than a school with a SRTS program but no garden? How would that score help
the KCFFI decide where to focus its resources?) Finding a way to produce an overall
score or evaluation of the food and fitness environment of a school would also be
challenging given the fact that the survey only looks at site-specific characteristics,
which, by definition, leaves out many elements (e.g. the school lunch program) that do
enhance the food and fitness environment of the schools. Finally, producing an overall
evaluation or score could distract from the Initiative’s efforts to find specific areas to
focus the Initiative’s resources within schools and other environments in the focus
communities in the coming years.

I will provide an electronic copy of the Excel file I created for compiling the survey
results to KCFFI Project Director by June 1, 2009 and will include instructions about
how to input survey results. Staff from either the Co-conveners or one of the community
leads will input the survey results after the remaining 13 surveys are completed.

Policy and Program Research Methodology

The purpose of this section of this paper is to provide the Initiative an overview and
analysis of policies and programs developed by entities outside the schools that affect the
food and fitness environments in schools. These entities may include school districts, the
state of Washington and the federal government, and programs such as Safe Routes to
School. I found much of the information for this section from online sources, including
school district web sites, state and federal government agency web sites, and nonprofit
organization web sites. I spoke on the telephone with school district nutrition services
staff from both districts and physical education staff from the Seattle district office (see
Appendix for district staff contacts), and individuals at organizations such as Feet First, a
local pedestrian advocacy organization, when I needed additional information or

 
 
 29 
 
clarification of certain policies or programs. 6 Based on conversations with Erin
MacDougall and Branden Born, I developed the following method to describe and
organize this information: I describe the policy, where it originated, what it does, and
how it affects schools in the focus communities. I have also noted whether questions
about the topics are included in the school survey. All sources are cited and contact
information, web site URLs and other resources are in the References section and/or
Appendix.

UW Human Subjects Division Approval of Protocol

As a graduate student at UW conducting surveys and gathering information from
individuals for the purposes of developing knowledge about the schools in the focus
communities, my work meets the UW Human Subjects Division (HSD) definition of
research (UW Human Subjects Division 2008). The UW HSD approved my project
protocol in February 2009 (Maman 2009). Consistent with HSD rules, I developed an
oral consent statement that I read to each person I interviewed at the three schools where
I tested the survey (see Appendix). Although UW required this statement only for
interviews conducted where the information will be included in this paper, much of the
background information in the statement would be useful for any interviewer to read
before starting the interview to explain the purpose of the research, how the information
will be used (i.e. the information is not confidential), and the rights of the interviewee.
 

                                                            
6
I was unable to speak with nutrition education staff in either district or the PE manager for Highline
Public Schools by the time of this writing.
 
 
 30 
 
DISCUSSION OF SURVEY AND POLICY RESEARCH PROCESS
 

As noted in the Introduction, one purpose of this professional project is to provide the
KCFFI a survey tool Initiative participants can use to collect site-specific information
about school characteristics and a way to collect the survey results. The Methodology
section describes how I prepared the survey and conducted the survey at three schools
before handing off the survey to the community leads to use at the remaining schools.

This section of the paper includes my reflections on developing and testing the survey
and the policy research process. I also discuss ways the KCFFI might improve this
method in the future. This section also includes my observations of survey results from
three schools I surveyed in April and May 2009. I also connect the survey questions to
the relevant policies that I will describe in further detail in the next section of the paper.

In general, I think this document is unique but my methodology is transferrable to studies

of school food and fitness environments in other communities. I have compiled
information about federal, state and Seattle and Highline school district policies that
affect the schools in the KCFFI focus communities. I have also developed a survey tool
that specifically addresses the range of topics of interest to the KCFFI. While this
document and the survey are unique in their relevance to the KCFFI, the methodology I
used is transferrable to other communities interested in producing a similar paper about
school food and fitness environments.

Reflections on Methodology
The school survey I developed is intended to provide the KCFFI with baseline
information about food and fitness environments in schools now and serve as a way to
measure changes in schools in the future as the Initiative implements its Community
Action Plan. One potential limitation of using questions based on assessment guidance

 
 
 31 
 
from the Kellogg Foundation or other existing assessment tools is that they may not
provide information related to the specific areas of most interest to the local Initiative.

As noted in the Methodology section, when I began work on this project in winter 2009,
the KCFFI leaders had not yet decided where to focus the Initiative in the Community
Action Plan, and wanted information about a broad range of topics related to school food
and fitness environments. I addressed these potential problems by including questions
about school-related potential tactics the KCFFI identified in winter 2009 and by asking
for feedback about the draft survey from the KCFFI assessment team throughout the
survey development process. Working with multiple stakeholders to develop the survey,
including the KCFFI Co-conveners, assessment team and other Initiative participants,
provided a thorough review of the survey questions and overall methodology.

The survey I developed using this method will allow the Initiative to collect the
information about school characteristics, programs and policies that are of interest to the
Initiative at this point in the planning process. KCFFI leaders may decide to conduct
other quantitative or qualitative surveys of parents, teachers, students or other community
members now or as part of an evaluation later if they decide additional views on the same
topics would be helpful to the Initiative, but such surveys were beyond the scope of my
professional project.

I was able to cover the topics the KCFFI identified in a survey length that was acceptable
to the three individuals I surveyed. (i.e. none of the interviews was longer than 30
minutes and none ended before I asked all the survey questions.) I, therefore, did not have
to choose whether to limit the number of topics. Initiative leaders may face such a
tradeoff between including a broad range of topics or focusing on a narrower set of topics
either this summer as Initiative leaders decide on topics for the Community Action Plan
or in future evaluation surveys. While the survey I developed does gather information
about many topics, the Initiative may want to follow up with schools on specific areas of
 
 
 32 
 
interest as those become clearer this summer. Choosing to focus on fewer topics with
greater depth in the future, however, may be appropriate and may provide the type of
information of interest to the Initiative for other surveys at that time.

Another limitation of this methodology is the potential for errors or inconsistent results if
multiple individuals conduct the survey. I addressed this by reducing jargon in the survey
questions and limiting open-ended questions so questions are easy for interviewers to
explain, easy for principals and others to understand, and responses are easy to record and
compile. As noted above, however, Initiative leaders may want to add more open-ended
questions in future surveys to gather more in-depth information about certain topics.

An additional limitation is the potential for variations in data as a result of revisions to the
survey following my initial test of the survey at three schools. I did not add new
questions as a result of testing the survey. I made minor changes to some questions to
make them easier to read and made minor changes to checklist answers for two questions
to better capture possible answers to those questions. Adding more questions, or more
open-ended questions, would require reducing the topics covered or require more time to
conduct the survey. Given the comments I heard from assessment team members about
the limited time I should expect with principals, extending the time needed to conduct the
survey did not seem like a good idea. One potential issue this presents is that I would
have had to conduct the survey – or parts of the survey – again at the first three schools
had I decided it was necessary to make substantive changes to the content of the survey,
so that the Initiative used the same survey at all 16 schools.

Based on my experience, I feel a separate food survey and fitness survey is unnecessary. I
would suggest in the future using a different survey for each school level, however, to
make the survey more clear for the interviewer. Some questions are only for elementary
schools, others for high schools. After talking with individuals who will conduct the
survey at middle schools and high schools, I realized that compiling all topics and
 
 
 33 
 
questions in a single survey could be confusing to interviewers. I addressed this by noting
which questions are for elementary schools and which for high schools, but a separate
survey document for school grade level might be more helpful.

Conducting the survey at three schools in April and May 2009 gave me the opportunity to
both see how the survey worked and an opportunity to introduce school administrators to
the KCFFI. The KCFFI leadership can establish new relationships with local schools or
build on existing relationships through the process of conducting this survey.

One topic that came up during conversations with assessment team members and
community lead organizations was whether I would conduct the survey with teachers,
parents and students. Based on early conversations with the Project Director, we
determined the focus for this survey would be principals or other school administrators.
The reason for this was that this survey is intended to gather primarily quantitative
information about school characteristics, programs and policies rather than qualitative
information about school food and fitness. This should reduce some potential problems
associated with interviewing only one person or only interviewing the principal rather
than interviewing a large group of staff, parents or others at each school. A more
qualitative survey could generate useful information for the Initiative but was outside the
scope of my project.

A tradeoff I faced with this methodology is the potential limitation of conducting the
survey with one person at each school. While the two principals and one teacher I spoke
with when I tested the survey answered all the survey questions, this may not be the case
at all schools as the community leads conduct the survey at the other 13 schools, and may
require speaking with additional staff to obtain a response to each survey question. The
survey includes instructions for the interviewer to obtain names and contact information
for other staff if the primary interview subject does not know the answer to a question.

 
 
 34 
 
In addition, limiting the survey to one or even a few staff members at a school limits the
information to that which the principal or other staff person can provide. While principals
likely know the answers to many of the questions about school facilities and programs,
some questions are specific to the classroom and, therefore, principals may not know the
answer or have the same information a teacher might have. One example is the question
regarding which foods, if any, are used in classrooms as a reward or for celebrations. This
may be something that a teacher could answer more accurately. The Initiative needs to
bear this in mind when reviewing the survey results.

I found the survey to be easy to conduct but also feel that my effort to address so many
different topics in as brief a time as possible limited my ability to follow up on some
questions where additional information might be helpful. I heard from assessment team
members while revising the draft survey questions that I would probably have very
limited time to meet with school principals, so I made every effort to limit the number of
open-ended questions and the total number of questions.

While this survey will provide good baseline information this year, additional discussions
with assessment team members and individuals who conduct the survey this summer
would be helpful before conducting this survey as a follow up to the Initiative
implementation in future years. Their feedback and input will be useful to determine
whether the same format and same set of questions would still be useful or whether to
focus only on the topics that are the focus of the Initiative implementation.

While the survey addresses site-specific characteristics of schools, the survey topics are
related to policies and programs developed and administered outside schools. Some of
the policies I describe in the next section include specific requirements and expectations.
While the survey I developed is not intended to be a monitoring tool, the process of
conducting the survey does offer an opportunity to learn about the extent to which
policies are being implemented. This provides some measure of accountability because
 
 
 35 
 
community members are asking questions related to the implementation of specific
policies and programs.

In addition, asking community members to conduct the surveys rather than conducting
the survey myself at all 16 schools is a way to engage community members in the
Initiative that can encourage their interest in what is happening in local schools and
benefit from their knowledge of the focus community schools. Actively engaging
community members in planning and decision-making is part of the KCFFI mission
(KCFFI 2008).

One limitation of the methodology for the policy section is the list of policies and
programs is not exhaustive and could be longer. As noted, I started with a list of topics
and questions that were the result of earlier research for the Initiative and limited my
work to the topics on that list based on discussions with the KCFFI Project Director.

Initial Observations
Conclusions about trends among all 16 schools would be premature since I surveyed only
three schools in April and May 2009, all three were elementary schools and they were
from each of the two districts. A few initial observations are worth noting based on my
experience at these three schools, however. KCFFI leaders may want to pay attention to
the following topics as additional survey results come in from other schools to see
whether these are trends.
• All three schools I surveyed have gardens that they use for educational purposes. The
type varies from a single garden to planter boxes. While the two districts do not have
specific school garden policies, this may be a potential opportunity for follow up if
the Initiative decides to focus on school gardens. Schools that already use gardens for
educational purposes may be a resource for other schools in the focus communities.
In addition, the Initiative may want to follow up to learn how these schools maintain
the gardens during the summer growing season and whether this is an area where the
 
 
 36 
 
Initiative could be involved. The survey does not include a follow up question about
maintenance of the gardens during the summer.
• Two of the three schools schedule recess before lunch. Both made the change this
school year. As I have noted in the section of this paper about recess before lunch,
much of the evidence I found about the benefits of recess before lunch elsewhere in
the country is very recent and anecdotal, and Seattle Public Schools encourages but
does not require recess before lunch. 7 Since this is a relatively new practice, KCFFI
may want to follow up with schools that have recess before lunch to understand the
barriers and get anecdotal information about the successes and challenges these
schools may have experienced during the transition to recess before lunch if the
Initiative decides to focus on this.
• Only one of the three schools sells competitive foods in the cafeteria. That school
sells yogurt in addition to the regular school lunch. If few other schools sell
competitive foods in the cafeteria, this may be an area the Initiative does not need to
focus on in terms of discouraging students from choosing unhealthy competitive
foods during meal times. Additional research would be needed to determine if schools
are interested in adding healthy competitive food items, particularly if they do not sell
any competitive foods now.
• All three schools are interested in providing free fresh fruits and vegetables. Given
the small size of the federal and state Fresh Fruit and Vegetable programs, however,
the KCFFI will need to explore how to help schools provide such snacks if additional
schools are also interested and the Initiative decides to focus on this type of program.
• Only one of the three schools had assemblies or other events where the speaker talked
about food or health-related topics. If few other schools have had similar events, this
could be a possible opportunity for the Initiative, given the range of experience and
expertise about food and fitness among the numerous participating organizations.

                                                            
7
I did not find a specific policy about this for Highline Public Schools.
 
 
 37 
 
• All three schools indicated they are interested in increasing parental involvement in
nutrition promotion activities at school.
• Two of the three schools do not currently have programs to encourage bicycling and
walking. Both indicated they are interested to learn how to incorporate such programs
in their schools.
As noted, these initial observations are based on results of only three surveys. Whether
these are truly trends will become clearer as the community lead organizations complete
the surveys at the remaining 13 schools and review the results. Trends associated with
other issues covered in the survey may become more apparent at that time.

Survey Questions and Related Policy and Program Sources

While the survey is intended to address site-specific characteristics of schools, the survey
topics are related to policies and programs developed and administered outside schools.
Table 6 below shows the connection between survey questions and topics and related
policies, if a policy exists. The next section of this paper describes these policies and
programs in detail.

Table 5. Survey questions and related policy and program sources.

Survey Questions and Topics Source of Related Policy or Program

School food service (breakfast, lunch, Federal school food programs, USDA
summer programs, snacks, food source). regulations, state OSPI guidelines, school
(Questions 1, 3, 4) district policies.
Competitive foods (a la carte items in the School district policies and procedures.
cafeteria, vending machines, school stores).
(Questions 2, 5, 7, 8, 9).
Food promotions/advertising. School district policies and procedures.
(Question 6).
Drinking water. School district policies and procedures.
(Questions 10, 35, 36).
School gardens. No specific district policies.
(Questions 11, 12, 13, 14, 15).
Fundraising. School district competitive food policies
(Question 16). and procedures.
 
 

Food in the classroom.
(Questions 17, 18).
Nutrition education (classroom,
assemblies/events).
(Questions 19, 20, 21).
Health and physical education.
(Questions 22, 23, 24, 25).
Active transportation (bicycling, walking,
crosswalks, sidewalks, other).
(Questions 26, 27, 28).
Recess.
(Questions 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34).
Facilities for PE and recess.
(Question 35).
Community access to school facilities for
physical fitness and recreation.
(Questions 36, 37).
Injury prevention and safety.
(Question 38).
Wellness policy implementation.
(Question 39).
Employee wellness programs.
(Questions 40, 41).
38 
School district competitive food policies
and procedures.
State laws, OSPI health and fitness
guidelines, school district policies and
procedures.
State laws, OSPI health and fitness
guidelines, school district policies.
Unable to find specific policy to encourage
active transportation. Programs include
Safe Routes to School (federal, state
guidelines for grants; nonprofit resources
for program design). Transportation
agencies responsible for streets, crossings
and sidewalks.
Unable to find state or school district recess
policy. Seattle Public Schools encourages
recess before lunch.
Unable to find specific school district
policies that specify which facilities a
school should/must have.
School district policies and procedures for
rental and joint use.
School district policies.
Federal child nutrition law and regulations,
state law and regulation, school district
wellness policies and procedures.
Unable to find specific school district
policy.
 39 
 
POLICIES AND PROGRAMS THAT AFFECT SCHOOLS

The survey I described above is intended to gather information about site-specific

policies and programs initiated inside schools that affect the food and fitness environment
in schools.

This section describes policies and programs developed outside the schools that affect
food and fitness environments in schools. Several school district, state and federal
policies and programs shape the food and fitness environments in schools. In Seattle and
Highline schools, for example, district policies related to food services, nutrition and
physical education in schools fall under the category of wellness policies. 8 In addition,
much of the funding for school food programs is from the federal government.

Understanding these and other policies and programs can help the KCFFI decide where
to focus the Initiative’s time and other resources in the Community Action Plan and
throughout the implementation of the Initiative. This part of the professional project is
intended to provide the Initiative leadership with a compendium of relevant policies and
programs that affect schools. This paper is not a typical policy analysis, which would
evaluate or compare policies with the intention of providing the reader specific
recommendations for action or compare the policies to determine which is better or more
effective. The KCFFI leadership has already begun to compile potential strategies and
tactics for the Community Action Plan. This section of the paper will add to the
information available for consideration during that planning process.

Much of the information for this section is from publicly-available information on school
district and other public agency web sites, web sites of organization that develop
                                                            
8
School district policies and procedures cited in this paper are available on the Seattle Public Schools and
Highline Public Schools policies and procedures web pages. Highline Public Schools:
http://www.hsd401.org/ourdistrict/board/policies/. Seattle Public Schools:
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/policies/index.dxml.
 
 
 40 
 
programs such as Safe Routes to Schools, published journal articles and research reports,
and telephone conversations and e-mail communications with school district staff. The
district wellness policies frame much of this section. Additional topics for this section are
based on research that UW public health graduate student Sara Coulter conducted in
spring 2008 to identify an initial list of potential school-related issues and survey
questions (see Methodology section above for additional information on this research.) I
have noted throughout this section where I have included questions in the KCFFI school
survey that address the related policy topic.

School District Wellness Policies

The federal Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-265)
included a provision that requires all local educational agencies participating in programs
included in the National School Lunch Program or Child Nutrition Act to establish a
wellness policy before the 2006-2007 school year (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture n.d.). The
federal law requires the following minimum components of a district wellness policy
(U.S. Dept. of Agriculture n.d.):
• "Goals for nutrition education, physical activity and other school-based activities that
are designed to promote student wellness in a manner that the local educational
agency determines is appropriate;
• Nutrition guidelines selected by the local educational agency for all foods available
on each school campus under the local educational agency during the school day with
the objectives of promoting student health and reducing childhood obesity;
• Guidelines for reimbursable school meals, which are no less restrictive than
regulations and guidance issued by the Secretary of Agriculture pursuant to
Subsections (a) and (b) of Section 10 of the Child Nutrition Act (42 U.S.C. 1779) and
Section 9(f)(1) and 17(a) of the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (42
U.S.C. 1758(f)(1), 1766(a)0, as those regulations and guidance apply to schools;

 
 
 41 
 
• A plan for measuring implementation of the local wellness policy, including
designation of one or more persons within the local educational agency or at each
school, as appropriate, charged with operational responsibility for ensuring that each
school fulfills the district's local wellness policy;
• Community involvement, including parents, students, and representatives of the
school food authority, the school board, school administrators, and the public in the
development of the school wellness policy."

The Washington Legislature enacted state legislation in 2004 (SB 5436) that required
school districts to develop wellness policies by August 1, 2005, a year earlier than the
federal requirement (Washington Legislature 2004). The state law notes that, although
the USDA regulates nutritional content in foods that are part of the federally-reimbursed
meal and snack programs, competitive foods are less regulated and may be less healthy.
Competitive foods are foods and snacks served in or sold in schools beyond the foods
that are part of the federally-reimbursed school breakfast, lunch and snack programs. 9

SB 5436 directed the state school directors association to collaborate with other
organizations to develop a model wellness policy to "address the nutritional content of
foods and beverages, including fluoridated bottled water, sold or provided throughout the
school day or sold in competition with the federal school breakfast and lunch program
and the availability and quality of health, nutrition, and physical education and fitness
curriculum. The model policy should include the development of a physical education
and fitness curriculum for students. For middle school students, physical education and
fitness curriculum means a daily period of physical activity, a minimum of twenty
                                                            
9
The Food Action & Research Center defines competitive foods as “foods and beverages which are offered
at school, other than meals and snacks served through the federally-reimbursed school lunch, breakfast and
afterschool snack programs. Competitive foods include: extra foods and beverages sold through “à la carte”
lines (which offer other food items for sale alongside the federally-reimbursed school meals); snack bars;
student stores; vending machines; and fundraisers (where school organizations sell baked goods or candy to
raise money.)” Seattle Public Schools uses a similar definition. A la carte items are foods sold in the
cafeteria in addition to those offered as part of the National School Lunch Program.
 
 
 42 
 
minutes of which is aerobic activity in the student's target heart rate zone, which includes
instruction and practice in basic movement and fine motor skills, progressive physical
fitness, athletic conditioning, and nutrition and wellness instruction through age-
appropriate activities"(Washington Legislature 2004 2). The Washington State School
Directors Association published a sample policy and sample procedure in December
2004 (Washington State School Directors Association 2004).

An elected school board in each school district develops and adopts the district-level
policies and procedures that govern Highline Public Schools and Seattle Public Schools
(Seattle Public Schools 2005; Highline Public Schools n.d.). Policies cover a range of
issues, including students, instruction, administration, and facilities. School boards for
both Seattle Public Schools and Highline Public Schools have adopted wellness policies
and several interrelated food- and fitness-related policies that address the necessary
components of the wellness policies. (District wellness policies had to meet state and
federal guidelines, but did not need to be a single policy called “wellness policy” (Weyer
2009).) The subsections below describe the elements and requirements of these district
policies and procedures.

The various elements that comprise each district’s wellness policy vary in both
comprehensiveness and use of direct language, according to a March 2009 evaluation. A
team of graduate students from the UW School of Public Health and Community
Medicine assessed 19 school district wellness policies in King County in winter 2009.
With guidance from Donna Johnson Ph.D., the students developed a methodology to
assess 96 policy components of wellness policies using measures of comprehensiveness
and strength. The team defined comprehensiveness of the policies as “proportion of
policy items that were simply mentioned in the policy” and strength as “proportion of
items that were addressed with specific and directive language” (University of
Washington 2009 4-5). The Highline and Seattle district wellness policies both scored
higher on comprehensiveness than strength, which was consistent with all other districts.
 
 
 43 
 
KCFFI leaders may want to explore how to include more “specific and directive
language” throughout the wellness policies in the two districts to improve the strength of
the policies. Given that these are relatively recent policies, however, it may be difficult to
advocate for the districts to change them.

Foods Available in Schools

Schools have several opportunities to give students access to healthy foods. A
combination of federal requirements and state and district policies guide foods available
to students in schools. One example is the federal dietary guidelines and school district
nutrition services policies that guide the nutrition levels of federally-reimbursed school
meals and snacks. These programs reimburse districts for free and reduced price meals to
low-income students. Students may also be able to buy food from vending machines or
through school fundraisers, which may have fewer nutritional guidelines.

Highline Public Schools’ food service policy directs the district to participate in the
USDA school lunch program and follow all USDA requirements for participation
(Highline Public Schools 1985). In addition, Highline Public Schools adopted standards
in 2007 for nutrition, physical activity and health education. The Highline nutrition
standards cover foods throughout the school environment (Highline Public Schools n.d.):
• “In the cafeteria: A la Carte items will meet the nutrition guidelines 10 established for
“competitive foods.” School meals will continue to be regulated by USDA
requirements based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
• In the classroom: Food and beverages in the classroom add to the daily calorie intake
for children, and these foods displace healthier foods. Foods shall not be used as
rewards in the school setting. Also, it is recommended that food used as part of
classroom celebrations (birthday parties, Cinco de Mayo, etc) be limited or replaced
with healthy foods or non-food celebration activities.

                                                            
10
See Appendix for Highline Public Schools nutrition guidelines.
 
 
 44 
 
• In the school environment: The overall school environment should model healthy
food choices. Foods and beverages consumed in school as fundraisers are required to
meet the standards for competitive foods. For example, Krispy Kreme doughnut sales
in the hallway will no longer be allowed. Foods consumed outside of school as
fundraisers are recommended to meet the standards. For instance, take-home order
forms for cookie dough as part of PTA fundraising are discouraged.
• In vending machines and student stores: Students should have the opportunity to
make healthy snack and beverage choices. Foods sold in vending machines and
through student stores must meet the criteria set for “competitive foods.”

Seattle Public Schools policy states that the district will follow USDA nutrition
guidelines for school meals provided through the federally-reimbursed programs (Seattle
Public Schools 2004). In addition, the district’s policy and procedure for food sales also
contain specific nutrition and sales guidelines that apply to competitive foods “whether
the food or beverage is served from vending machines, student stores or offered or sold
by parent groups, booster clubs, associated student body groups, a la carte sales in
lunchrooms, by teachers in class or by others. (The procedures do not apply to meals and
snacks brought by students for their individual consumption)” (Seattle Public Schools
2004 1). (See Appendix for food distribution and sales procedure.)

The Washington Legislature enacted the Local Farms-Healthy Kids Act (2SSB 6483) in
2008, which includes several provisions to increase opportunities to link locally-grown
products and schools. The Local Farms-Healthy Kids Act created four new programs,
including two specifically related to schools: a new Farm-to-School Program within the
Washington Department of Agriculture (WSDA) and a new Washington Grown Fresh
Fruit and Vegetable Grant Program within the Office of Superintendent of Public
Instruction (OSPI) (see Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program subsection below for more
details). The Farm-to-School Program is intended to facilitate more procurement of

 
 
 45 
 
Washington-grown foods in schools. The law directs WSDA to do the following
(Washington Legislature 2008 2):
• “identify and develop policies and procedures, including proposed uniform
procurement procedures, to implement and evaluate the program;
• assist food producers, distributors, and brokers to market Washington grown food to
schools by informing them of opportunities and requirements;
• assist schools in connecting with local producers by informing them of sources,
availability and benefits of Washington grown foods;
• identify and recommend ways to increase predictability of sales and adequacy of
supply;
• identify and make available curricula, programs, and publications educating students
on the benefits of preparing and consuming locally-grown food;
• support efforts to advance other farm-to-school connections such as school gardens or
farms, and farm visits; and
• seek additional funds to leverage state expenditures.”

Federal School Food Programs

The federal Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 11 authorizes federal
financial support for several food programs that provide meals and snacks to students
locally. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers the following school
meals programs that are included in the law: the National School Lunch Program, School
Breakfast Program, Afterschool Snacks Program, Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Program,
Seamless Summer Program, and the Special Milk Program (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture
2009). The USDA also sets requirements for these school food programs that outline how
children qualify for the programs, including free and reduced price meals (see Pricing
section below). The availability of free and reduced meals is important, particularly in the
                                                            
11
Congress will revise the Child Nutrition Act in 2009. The National School Lunch Program and School
Breakfast Program are permanently authorized, but other programs authorized in the law are reauthorized
every five years.
 
 
 46 
 
KCFFI focus communities, where 2007-2008 OSPI data show that six of the seven
Highline schools in the focus communities have free and reduced meal participation rates
more than 10 percent higher than the Highline district-wide percentage, 12 and four of the
seven Seattle schools in the focus communities have participation rates more than 30
percent higher than the Seattle district-wide percentage (see Table 4 in the Introduction.)

In the state of Washington, school food authorities "participating in the NSLP [National
School Lunch Program] and SBP [School Breakfast Program] are required to provide
meals that contain one-third of the Recommended Dietary Intakes (RDIs) for protein,
calcium, iron, vitamin A, vitamin C and calories with no more than 30% of the calories
from fat and no more than 10% of the calories from saturated fat" (Washington Office of
Superintendent of Public Instruction n.d.) Highline Public Schools and Seattle Public
Schools have adopted district policies regarding the district’s participation in the USDA
school food programs (Highline Public Schools 1985; Seattle Public Schools 2004).

National School Lunch, School Breakfast and Afterschool Snacks Programs

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP)
provide students free and reduced price meals that must meet federal nutrition guidelines
that are based on the 1995 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which recommend "no
more than 30 percent of an individual's calories come from fat, and less than 10 percent
from saturated fat. [Federal] Regulations also establish a standard for school lunches to
provide one-third of the Recommended Dietary Allowances of protein, Vitamin A,
Vitamin C, iron, calcium, and calories" (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture 2008 1).The USDA
reimburses school districts with cash subsidies and donates commodities for every meal
the districts serve.

                                                            
12
Data for Evergreen High School was unavailable.
 
 
 47 
 
In addition to requiring meals meet the USDA nutrition guidelines, the Seattle district’s
breakfast and lunch program procedure includes language about healthy foods that the
district should provide, but does not require (Seattle Public Schools 2004 2-3): “Child
Nutrition Services should provide the following types of food and beverages whenever
feasible and cost effective:
• Food and beverages that are fresh, locally grown or produced, certified organic,
unprocessed, non-GMO (do not contain Genetically Modified Organisms) and non-
irradiated;
• Food and beverages that do not contain additives or preservatives;
• Food and beverages that are low in fat, saturated fat and trans fatty acids, and low in
added sugar and sodium;
• Food and beverages that meet special dietary requirements (such as vegan and
vegetarian options);
• Protein alternatives, such as soy products and non-dairy alternatives, such as soymilk
or rice beverages.”
Highline Public Schools also follow USDA nutrition guidelines for participation in the
federally-reimbursed breakfast and lunch programs. Both districts participate in a co-
operative that includes several school districts in the region to purchase school foods
(Neal 2009; Weyer 2009).

In 1998, Congress approved the afterschool snacks program, which allows schools to
provide afterschool snacks to students eligible for the free and reduced meals programs.
To participate, school districts must be part of the NSLP and “must sponsor or operate an
afterschool care program which provides children with regularly scheduled educational or
enrichment activities in a supervised environment” (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture 2009). The
USDA also provides guidelines for the types of snacks that schools can offer: “the snacks
must contain at least two different components of the following four: a serving of fluid
milk; a serving of meat or meat alternate; a serving of vegetable(s) or fruit(s) or full

 
 
 48 
 
strength vegetable or fruit juice; a serving of whole grain or enriched bread or cereal”
(U.S. Dept. of Agriculture 2009).

Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program

Both the federal government and Washington state government have programs to
increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables for snacks in schools. The federal Fresh
Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP) started as a pilot program in 2002. Congress
approved additional funding and authorization to expand the program in the years since
then and made the FFVP a nationwide program in 2008 (Washington Office of
Superintendent of Public Instruction 2009 18). This program gives students in
participating schools free fruit and vegetables during the school day. The FFVP has four
goals (Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction 2009 18):
• “Create healthier school environments by providing healthier food choices.
• Expand the variety of fruits and vegetables children experience.
• Increase children’s fruit and vegetable consumption.
• Make a difference in children’s diets to impact their present and future health.”

OSPI is the state agency that administers the FFVP program in Washington. OSPI funded
the program in 25 Washington schools in the 2008-2009 school year, including one
school in the Seattle school district (Concord Elementary) and one in the Highline school
district (Madrona Elementary)(Kovacs 2009). No schools in the KCFFI focus
communities received federal FFVP grants in 2008-2009.

The Local Farms-Healthy Kids legislation described earlier created the Washington
Grown Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Grants Program at 25 schools throughout the state. The
program encourages participating schools to incorporate nutrition, environmental
education and agriculture stewardship in their program and also gives priority to K-8
schools with more than 50% of students eligible for free and reduced meals (Partners in

 
 
 49 
 
Action 2009). Van Asselt Elementary in Seattle and Beverly Park Elementary in Highline
received state FFVP grants for the current school year (Kovacs 2009). Beverly Park is in
White Center. OSPI will notify school district nutrition directors in the state when the
next grants are available (Washington Dept. of Agriculture n.d.). The Washington
Legislature recently cut the funding for this program by 50% in the 2009-2011 budget,
which will reduce the number of schools that receive funding from 25 to 12 (Washington
Legislature 2009 193).

The USDA noted in a report to Congress the following key factors to the success of the
FFVP (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture n.d. 4):
• commitment and support of school and district administration
• student and parental involvement
• a school’s ability to purchase a variety of fresh produce
• partnerships with local farmers
• use of prepackaged items
• positive program publicity in the community

The USDA also reported that "schools often noted frequent delivery of produce provides
more appealing and fresher products, resulting in more student interest and higher
consumption levels. Schools with several years of FFVP experience noted because
students have had repetitive exposure to fresh produce and accompanying nutrition
education, the students look forward to the fruits and vegetables offered and are starting
to think more about a healthy diet. Contributing factors to program success also included
the level of State support and non-school partnerships" (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture n.d. 4).

Since the Highline and Seattle districts each have adopted wellness policies, the federal
and state governments have fresh fruit and vegetable programs, and the KCFFI is a
collaborative effort, the KCFFI may be an effective partner to support or expand fresh

 
 
 50 
 
fruit and vegetable snack programs in other KCFFI focus community schools. The
KCFFI school survey includes a question about interest in providing fresh fruits and
vegetables for snacks in schools to better understand the level of interest among KCFFI
focus community schools in incorporating such a program. All three individuals at the
three schools I surveyed in April and May 2009 are interested in providing free fruits and
vegetables as snacks in their schools. In addition, one elementary school in the KCFFI
focus communities, Beverly Park Elementary, is an FFVP grant recipient and has
experience with this program. That school may be a source of information about how
KCFFI could help implement such a program at other schools.

Summer Food Service Program

Highline Public Schools and Seattle Public Schools also participate in the USDA
Summer Food Service Program, which provides free meals and snacks to students age 18
and younger. Meals must meet the same nutrition guidelines as the other USDA school
meal and snack programs and open sites (i.e. sites where any child can get a free meal)
are sites in areas where half the children are from families that qualify for the free and
reduced meal program (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture 2009). 2009 program sites will be
announced later this spring. In the Highline district, the school district sponsors and
operates the summer food service program. In Seattle, the City of Seattle operates the
summer food service program and Seattle Public Schools provides the food but the City
of Seattle operates the program(Weyer 2009).

The City of Seattle operated the summer food service program at 102 sites in Seattle in
2008, including 75 open sites where any student under age 18 could receive a free meal
or snack (Seattle Human Services Department n.d.). Seattle program sites in 2008
included the following in the KCFFI focus communities: Delridge Community Center,
Denny Middle School, Denny Community Learning Center, E.C. Hughes Playground,
Hana Childcare, High Point Community Center, Roxhill Elementary, Safe Futures Youth
Center, The Salvation Army, UGM Mt. View Presbyterian,(Seattle Human Services
 
 
 51 
 
Department n.d.) .Additional research is needed to determine how KCFFI can collaborate
with the City of Seattle and the two school districts to identify potential Summer Food
Service Program sites to ensure eligible students throughout the KCFFI focus
communities can easily access a program site.

Competitive Foods
As noted earlier, schools can offer foods and beverages in addition to the meals and
snacks they offer through the federally-reimbursed programs. Competitive foods can
include à la carte items in the lunchroom, foods and beverages sold as part of a
fundraising activity or in vending machines or student stores, and foods used in the
classroom.

Highline Public Schools and Seattle Public Schools have each adopted nutrition standards
that apply to competitive foods in schools. The Seattle district Procedure for Distribution
and Sale of Competitive Foods and the Highline district General Guidelines for
Competitive Food Sales (see Appendix) include required nutrition standards for
competitive foods sold during the school day, portion size guidelines, guidelines for
foods sold as part of fundraising activities, and an exemption from the guidelines for
competitive foods distributed during class parties or celebrations (Seattle Public Schools
2004; Highline Public Schools n.d.). The Seattle procedure also includes guidelines for
vending machines and student stores. Although the Highline competitive foods guidelines
do not specifically mention vending machines, fundraisers or student stores, they very
clearly state “These guidelines apply to ALL foods sold in schools during the regular
school day” (Highline Public Schools n.d. 1).

In addition to competitive foods in the lunchroom, schools are also allowed to have
vending machines. Highline district policy allows vending machines “only after the
approval of the superintendent and only if the use of such machines does not interfere

 
 
 52 
 
with school programs” (Highline Public Schools 1985). Highline district procedures
provide the following specific guidance about the use of vending machines:
• Principals must make requests to the superintendent for use of vending machines.
• Products sold through vending machines may not conflict with the health or education
or food service programs of the district.
• Vending machines other than apple and milk machines may not be located in the
lunchroom.
• Vending machines other than apple and milk machines may not be in operation
during the regularly scheduled breakfast and lunch periods.
Foods sold in vending machines must meet the Highline school district’s nutrition
guidelines (see Appendix).

Seattle Public Schools’ competitive foods procedures (see Appendix) include specific
nutritional standards for competitive foods including food in vending machines, pricing
procedures and additional requirements of vendor contracts to prevent distribution of free
foods or beverages or incentives to increase student consumption of competitive foods
and drinks (Seattle Public Schools 2004).

Seattle district procedures acknowledge the potential impact of foods that compete with
the USDA school foods programs on students’ choices with regard to nutrition and their
health: “The availability of unhealthful food and beverages sold in competition with the
federal school meal programs also undermines the financial viability, effectiveness and
quality of the school meal programs. Research shows that students who participate in
school meal programs have higher intakes of key essential nutrients at lunch and over a
24-hour period. … The availability of non-nutritious foods undermines nutrition
education efforts, encourages over consumption of foods high in fat and added sugar,
teaches children to associate food with praise and teaches children to eat when they are

 
 
 53 
 
not hungry. It also increases the potential for development of eating disorders, food-borne
illnesses and food-based allergic reactions” (Seattle Public Schools 2004 1).

Since schools decide which, if any, competitive foods will be available; this may be an
area for the KCFFI to collaborate with school administrators to influence healthy food
choices. The KCFFI school survey includes questions about the availability of vending
machines students can access, vending machine contents, use of vending machine
revenue, foods used as part of fundraising activities, competitive foods in the lunchroom
and the classroom, and advertising in the school to better understand the availability
content and use of competitive foods in KCFFI focus community schools. Only one of
the three schools I surveyed in April and May 2009 sells a competitive food item
(yogurt). Looking at the responses to these survey questions after all 16 schools are
surveyed will give the KCFFI a better understanding of the extent of competitive food
availability and content in schools and whether opportunities exist for the KCFFI to work
with schools to encourage schools to sell healthy competitive foods.
.
Pricing
The USDA sets the following pricing requirements for meals offered through the
National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, and Afterschool Snacks
Program (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture 2008 2):
• “Any child at a participating school may purchase a meal through the National School
Lunch Program. Children from families with incomes at or below 130 percent of the
poverty level are eligible for free meals. Those with incomes between 130 percent
and 185 percent of the poverty level are eligible for reduced-price meals, for which
students can be charged no more than 40 cents. (For the period July 1, 2008, through
June 30, 2009, 130 percent of the poverty level is $27,560 for a family of four; 185
percent is $39,220.)

 
 
 54 
 
• Children from families with incomes over 185 percent of poverty pay a full price,
though their meals are still subsidized to some extent. Local school food authorities
set their own prices for full-price (paid) meals, but must operate their meal services as
non-profit programs.
• Afterschool snacks are provided to children on the same income eligibility basis as
school meals. However, programs that operate in areas where at least 50 percent of
students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals may serve all their snacks for
free.”

Seattle schools can select their own competitive foods, based on the district’s approved
snack and vending list (Weyer 2009). In addition, some pricing guidelines are included in
the competitive foods distribution procedures that may encourage healthier beverage
choices by pricing beverages other than milk higher than the cost of bottled water, and
discourage less healthy choices by not allowing incentives for competitive foods or free
foods (Seattle Public Schools 2004 2-3). Highline Public Schools has no specific policy
regarding pricing competitive foods (Neal 2009)

Given that the USDA sets prices for the school food programs, KCFFI may want to focus
on competitive food pricing if schools sell competitive foods that the Initiative wants to
discourage (see Competitive Foods section above for competitive foods policies.)

Drinking Water
The Seattle Public Schools policy on drinking water quality and access states: “It is the
policy of the Seattle Public Schools to provide all students and staff with access to ample
quantities of clean, safe, aesthetically pleasing drinking water free of charge at every
District facility throughout the school day” (Seattle Public Schools 2004 1). The related
Drinking Water Quality and Access Procedure outlines the specific standards the district
will follow to exceed minimum standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency,

 
 
 55 
 
and state and county health agencies to provide safe drinking water (Seattle Public
Schools 2004). 13 The school survey asks whether students have access to free, fresh tap
water throughout the school day and whether drinking fountains are among the facilities
students can access for recess and PE class.

Food Environment Near Schools

The focus of this report and the KCFFI school survey is the food and fitness
environments within schools. The 2008 report from UW, Food for Thought, includes a
neighborhood-level assessment of the built environment in the KCFFI focus
communities, including a map and analysis of the types and locations of food sources in
the neighborhoods (University of Washington 2008). One area where schools may have
some influence on student access to foods near campus during the school day is policies
that specify whether students may leave the school campus during the school day.

Highline Public Schools, for example, has the following closed campus policy: “Students
shall remain on school grounds from time of arrival until close of school unless officially
excused. Juniors and seniors may leave campus during lunch with a verified parent
permission form approved by the school administration” (Highline Public Schools 1999).
The Seattle Public Schools policy regarding access and egress from secondary schools
leaves the decision to individual schools: “It is the policy of the Seattle School Board that
secondary schools shall determine restrictions on students’ access to and egress from
school grounds during school hours” (Seattle Public Schools 1995). Stronger policies
either at the district or school level may reduce student access to unhealthy foods and
beverages available in stores near campus during the school day.

                                                            
13
I was unable to find a similar specific policy related to drinking water on the Highline Public Schools
web site either as a separate policy or reference to drinking water in the district’s facilities-related policies.
This may be an area for follow-up with the district if the Initiative decides to focus on drinking water
quality and access.
 
 
 56 
 
The issue of such campus policies and access to food in the areas around campus came up
in my conversations with KCFFI assessment team members and youth at Youngstown
Cultural Arts Center. This may be an area for additional research to identify where
students go off campus to eat, what foods are available and whether opportunities exist
for KCFFI to encourage access to healthy foods at those locations. The Initiative may
also want to collaborate with schools to find ways to encourage students to stay on
campus rather than leaving campus during the school day.

Nutrition Education
The Washington OSPI developed health and fitness standards that include four Expected
Academic Learning Requirements (EALR) for health and fitness for K-12 students that
include nutrition (see Physical Education section below for detailed explanation of health
and fitness standards). To ensure compliance with these expectations, Highline Public
Schools and Seattle Public Schools have adopted wellness policies and additional policies
and procedures that incorporate nutrition education into the curriculum (Highline Public
Schools 2005; Seattle Public Schools 2006; Seattle Public Schools 2006). While the
Highline district wellness policy refers to including nutrition in the curriculum, a specific
nutrition education policy or procedure is not on the district web site with other board
policies. 14

Seattle Public Schools has a clear policy to ensure all students get nutrition education as
part of their education, with a goal of “improving attitude and behavior regarding
nutritious food choices through a sequential and comprehensive approach. … Using
culturally relevant, developmentally appropriate approaches, students will gain an
understanding of the relationships among personal food choices, individual health, and
environmental impact across food systems and society” (Seattle Public Schools 2006).

                                                            
14
I was unable to reach nutrition education staff in either district regarding specific curriculum content.
 
 
 57 
 
The related nutrition education procedure (see Appendix) lays out the steps the district
will take to implement this policy, including (Seattle Public Schools 2006):
• “A minimum of 10 hours per year of nutrition education shall be allocated for
nutrition education lessons. Nutrition education shall be a component of a sequential
Health Education Curriculum in all grades from Pre-K to 12.
• Nutrition education shall be integrated into the curricula of Health Education, Health
& Fitness, Science, Family & Consumer Sciences Education core subject areas as
appropriate. Nutrition education lessons will support the WA State Essential
Academic Learning Requirements, Grade Level Expectations (GLE’s) and Classroom
Based Assessments (CBA’s)
o Nutrition education at all levels of the district’s integrated curriculum should
include, but not be limited to, the following essential components designed to
help students learn: Age appropriate nutritional knowledge … age appropriate
nutrition-related skills… How to assess one’s personal eating habits, set goals
for improvement, and achieve those goals.”
The procedure also includes teacher trainings about nutrition topics, district support of
experiential learning through partnerships between the classroom and the cafeteria,
district encouragement of “the development of school nutrition councils and policies
supporting healthful eating, providing nutrition education through school
communications (i.e. newsletters), promoting school gardens and community supported
agriculture, encouraging staff to act as role models for healthy eating and developing
school wide policies for food allergies” (Seattle Public Schools 2006).

Highline Public Schools provides the following resources to schools to support nutrition
education in the classroom: Food Sense CHANGE program (see School Gardens section
below), schools can request a nutrition educator to come to the school, and a

 
 
 58 
 
comprehensive health and substance abuse prevention program (The Great Body Shop)
for use in preschool through middle schools (Highline Public Schools n.d.). 15

School Gardens
The Highline and Seattle district wellness policies include nutrition education among the
health and fitness elements of the policies, as required by the state law directing districts
to establish wellness policies. School gardens are one way to enhance school-based
nutrition education. Several research studies cited in a 2005 evaluation of school
gardening in California showed that school gardens can have a positive effect on students
because they increase nutrition knowledge, improve preferences for fruits and vegetables
and enhance nutrition education programs (Graham, Beall et al. 2005), Another study
showed adolescents who participated in a garden-based nutrition education program
increased servings of fruits and vegetables (McAleese and Rankin 2007). A 2009 review
of the impact of garden-based nutrition education also found the potential of such
programs to have a positive effect on children and youth in terms of fruit and vegetable
intake (Robinson-O'Brien, Story et al. 2009). In addition, a UW graduate student, Aaron
Ferguson, is working on a study of school gardens in the Puget Sound region that will be
available this summer.

Although the Seattle nutrition education policy described earlier includes promotion of
experiential learning opportunities such as school gardens, neither the Highline nor
Seattle district has a specific district policy requiring school gardens. The Highline
district encourages school gardens in nutrition education by providing information to
schools about the Food Sense CHANGE (Cultivating Health and Nutrition through
Gardening Education) program on the district web site. The USDA funds and WSU-King
County Extension implements Food Sense CHANGE. The program includes the
following activities (WSU-King County Extension 2009):
                                                            
15
I was unable to reach the nutrition and physical education staff person at Highline Public Schools to
discuss the district PE curriculum.
 
 
 59 
 
• Use gardening to enhance nutrition education curriculum to improve nutrition of
limited income children and their families.
• Use cooking and other hands-on activities.
• Provide support system and resource to teachers who are incorporating nutrition
education into daily classroom work.
• Participate in family or adult outreach activities.
Food Sense CHANGE works with the following schools in the KCFFI focus
communities (all are in the Highline district): Beverly Park Elementary, Cedarhurst
Elementary, Mount View Elementary, Southern Heights Elementary, White Center
Heights Elementary (WSU-King County Extension 2008). Schools in King County where
50% or more of students qualify for free or reduced meals are eligible to participate in the
Food Sense CHANGE program free of charge.

The Local Farms-Healthy Kids law supports school gardens in two specific ways: the law
allows schools to grow food they can use in snack and meal programs (if they meet safety
standards), and requires nutrition education about both organic and conventional growing
methods to be part of school garden programs (WSU-King County Extension 2008)

Challenges to implementing school gardens do exist. One recent study found the
challenges fall into three categories: funding, time and personnel (Ozer 2007). Ozer
(2007) also cites an evaluation of a school garden program in Los Angeles that was not
sustained for many reasons that could all fit these three categories, which highlights the
need to develop support for a school garden program among teachers, administrators,
parents, and volunteers.

The KCFFI school survey includes questions about whether the school has a garden,
garden size, how the garden is used, whether the site is permanently set aside for a
garden, and what factors might encourage schools without a garden to start one. These

 
 
 60 
 
questions will generate useful information about existing garden locations, where
possibilities may exist for additional school gardens and identify factors that would
encourage new school gardens. The three elementary schools where I conducted the
survey in April and May 2009 each have one or more gardens the schools use for
educational purposes. The survey responses to these questions can help KCFFI
understand how the Initiative might best support existing gardening programs, facilitate
additional school gardens at schools that would like to start one and opportunities for
KCFFI to support sustainable use of school gardens in education.

On a broader scale, the KCFFI may also be able to identify trends or examples of school
garden use that the Initiative could use to encourage the Seattle and Highline school
districts to adopt district policies regarding school gardens. A clear district policy on
school gardens could expand opportunities for gardens at schools. One area for further
research is how to ensure school gardens are supported year round. KCFFI may be able to
collaborate with schools to develop and implement strategies to maintain school gardens
through the summer growing season when students are not in school.

Physical Education
Washington state policies and standards direct district-level development of physical
education (PE) policies and programs. The Washington OSPI describes the broad context
and purpose of its PE policies: “An understanding of good health and fitness concepts
and practices is essential for all students. Teaching our students good health and safety
principles can lead to a lifetime of healthy practices, resulting in more productive, active,
and successful lives. The Health and Fitness Standards establish the concepts and skills
necessary for safe and healthy living, and in turn, for successful learning” (Office of
Superintendent of Public Instruction n.d.).

OSPI defines physical education as “a planned, sequential program of curricula and

instruction that helps students develop the knowledge, attitudes, motor skills, self
 
 
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management skills, and confidence needed to adopt and maintain physically active and
healthy lifestyles” (Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction 2009 6).
OSPI differentiates between PE and physical activity, describing physical education as a
curriculum and physical activity as the application of what students learn in PE classes
(Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction 2009 7-8).

OSPI Health and Fitness Standards include the following four Essential Academic
Learning Requirements (EALR) 16 , two for health education and two for fitness
education, which are the broad skills and knowledge the state expects students to learn
throughout K-12 education (Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction
2009 11-12):
• The student acquires the knowledge and skills necessary to maintain an active life:
Movement, physical fitness, and nutrition.
• The student acquires the knowledge and skills necessary to maintain a healthy life:
Recognizes dimensions of health, recognizes stages of growth and development,
reduces health risks, and lives safely.
• The student analyzes and evaluates the impact of real-life influences on health.
• The student effectively analyzes personal information to develop individualized
health and fitness plans.

The state Health and Fitness Standards include more specific components, benchmarks
and grade-level expectations for each of the four EALRs (see References for reference
information). The grade-level expectations are based on input from teams of practicing
health and fitness educators from around the state. OSPI does not require districts to
follow the grade-level expectations; rather, they are suggested guidelines districts can

                                                            
16
EALRs "articulate the State’s expectations and learning standards." (OSPI 2009). To assess whether
students have achieved these EALRs, the state developed health and fitness-related Classroom Based
Assessments (CBA) that districts use as part of the state's educational assessment program, known as the
Washington Assessment for Student Learning (WASL),
 
 
 62 
 
follow as they develop their own health and fitness curriculum (Washington Office of
Superintendent of Public Instruction 2009).

In addition to these Health and Fitness Standards, the Washington state basic education
law includes goals for school districts with regard to opportunities they provide to
students to learn essential knowledge and skills. Among these are knowledge and skills
needed to know and apply several core concepts and principles, including health and
fitness (Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction 2009 4-5)

State law requires public school students in grades 1-8 to receive PE instruction 17
(Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction 2009). State regulations
specify that students in grades 1-8 should receive an average of 100 minutes per week
each year of PE instruction, plus a one credit course in PE for each year in grades 9-12
(Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction 2009 5). State regulations
also state that recess is intended to give students unstructured play time and cannot be
used to meet this 100 minute per week average instruction time requirement. The KCFFI
school survey asks about the amount of time students have for PE each school year and
recess time each day.

Recess
The National Association for Sport and Physical Education recommends all elementary
school students have at least one 20-minute recess each day (Natl. Assoc. for Sport and
Physical Education 2006). The KCFFI school survey asks how many minutes of recess
students have each day and whether the time is structured or free play time. The survey

                                                            
17
State law requires PE with the following exceptions for grades 1-8: “That individual pupils or students
may be excused on account of physical disability, religious belief, or participation in directed athletics.”
And for high school “That individual students may be excused from participating in physical education
otherwise required under this section on account of physical disability, employment, or religious belief, or
because of participation in directed athletics or military science and tactics or for other good cause.”
 
 
 63 
 
also asks whether recess is before or after lunch. Many districts around the country are
starting to have recess before lunch.

Information about the benefits of recess before lunch is primarily anecdotal. Few
published studies confirm the positive effects of recess before lunch. A 1996 study of
children in grades 1-3, however, found less food waste when recess was scheduled before
lunch. The author concluded "When recess is scheduled before lunch, children come to
lunch ready to eat and are less distracted. Children pay attention, achieve more, and have
a more positive school experience when they are not hungry. ... In summary, our data
indicate that children may perform better in school when recess is scheduled before
lunch" (Getlinger, Laughlin et al. 1996 907). A pilot study of recess before lunch at four
schools in Montana showed the average amount of food and beverage waste per student
decreased. The Montana Team Nutrition office conducted the pilot at two K-2 schools,
one K-8 school and one 5-8 grade middle school. Although the small sample size did not
allow for a formal statistical measure, the Montana pilot study data "appear to show an
overall decrease in average food and beverage waste after implementation of a RBL
[recess before lunch] policy (Montana OPI 2003 28).

The Seattle district’s breakfast and lunch procedure encourages, but does not require,
recess before lunch (Seattle Public Schools 2004). The KCFFI school survey asks
whether recess is before lunch to better understand the extent to which schools in the
focus communities are scheduling recess before lunch. Two of the three schools I
surveyed in April and May 2009 have recently scheduled recess before lunch. KCFFI
leaders should note the answers to this survey question to see whether other schools have
recess before lunch. If the KCFFI leaders decide this is a potential strategy to support,
they may want to follow up with schools that have already scheduled recess before lunch
to identify barriers they encountered, reaction from students, teachers and staff, and
lessons learned regarding impact on student eating habits and classroom behavior.

 
 
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Community Access to School Recreation Facilities
Schools have a range of facilities for PE and recess, including fields, indoor gymnasiums
and playgrounds. The KCFFI school survey includes questions about the types of
facilities that exist at schools in the focus communities. This basic inventory will help the
Initiative leaders better understand what facilities exist throughout the focus community
for children and youth in addition to community facilities such as parks. The survey also
asks whether community members have access to these school recreation facilities in the
evenings, on weekends or at other times when school is not in session. The survey also
includes a question about joint use agreements with organizations or agencies that use
school recreation facilities for sports programs.

Seattle Public Schools and Highline Public Schools have adopted policies and procedures
that govern community use of school facilities. Seattle Public Schools has seven policies
in the category of “Community Use of School Facilities,” including: Joint Use of School
Facilities policy, Short Term Lease of School District Facilities policy, Joint Use
Agreement policy, Priorities for School And community After-Hours Use in Operating
School Facilities policy, Community Use of School District Facilities policy, Use of
School Facilities by Religious Groups policy, and Community Use of Memorial Stadium
policy (Seattle Public Schools 2007). All are available on the school district web site (see
References).

The Seattle Public Schools policy for community use of school facilities states that
“operating school facilities will first be used to support the needs of that school’s
programs. After those program needs are met, the Seattle Parks Department will have
priority use for its supervised program. Childcare will have next priority. Finally, school
facilities shall be made available for other occasional community uses” (Seattle Public
Schools 1999). The related procedures outline specific guidelines that govern “occasional
use of space within an operating school building beyond the regular school day at fair
rental rates,” including use for non-school-related activities (Seattle Public Schools
 
 
 65 
 
1999). The district has additional procedures for short-term use of surplus space within
operating school facilities (Seattle Public Schools 2001).

The Highline Public Schools policy states “The board believes that public schools are
owned and operated by and for its patrons. Therefore, the board encourages adult directed
community groups in the Highline School district to use school facilities for the purpose
of education, recreation and entertainment“ (Highline Public Schools 1983 1). For rental
rate purposes, the policy also defines the following five categories of groups that may use
school facilities: non-profit, non-commercial, non-sectarian, Highline District
community, adult directed student and employee organizations; special interest
community groups; adult recreational groups; commercial enterprises; and revenue-
raising events (Highline Public Schools 1983). The related procedure document describes
the rental and application process, and outlines the rules for use of gymnasiums,
elementary school playground and athletic areas (Highline Public Schools 1983).

School survey results could be combined with the community facilities data in the 2008
Food for Thought report from UW to give a more detailed picture of the types and
locations of recreation facilities that exist and are open to the community. KCFFI may
want to discuss with school administrators ways to expand access to facilities at schools
in areas of the KCFFI focus communities where similar community facilities are not
accessible.

Active Transportation
The phrase active transportation refers to the use of any human-powered travel mode, but
is often used to refer to biking or walking (Rails-to-Trails Conservancy 2008; Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation 2008; Public Health Agency of Canada n.d.; U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention n.d.). The Seattle and Highline transportation policies
discuss bus service and do not include information about active transportation modes
(Highline Public Schools 1985; Seattle Public Schools 1996).
 
 
 66 
 

To learn more about active transportation to and from schools, the KCFFI school survey
includes questions about facilities such as bicycle racks that support active transportation
and another question about the percentage of students who walk, ride a bicycle or use
other active modes of transportation. The survey also asks about existing programs that
encourage active transportation and interest in ways to start and implement such
programs. These questions will generate information that can help the Initiative better
understand the extent to which students incorporate physical activity in their
transportation to and from school, and interest among schools in ways to encourage
active transportation.

The 2008 Food for Thought report includes a more extensive explanation of
neighborhood walkability and the methodology the UW Urban Form Lab used to define
neighborhood walkability in its research about walkability in King County (Moudon, Lee
et al. 2006; University of Washington 2008). While the UFL research gives insight into
the average walkability (i.e. the likelihood that an individual will walk in a given
neighborhood), the research may be less helpful with regard to schools and active
transportation because the self-reported data in the UFL walkability methodology are
based on a telephone survey of adults, not children, which may affect the measure of
walkability as it applies to students walking to or from schools in the KCFFI focus
communities.

The school survey also includes an observation of the sidewalk and crosswalk conditions
around schools. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and the King County
Department of Transportation plan, design, build, and maintain the streets and sidewalks
and install traffic signals and crossing signs in Seattle and King County, respectively
(King County Dept. of Transportation n.d.; Seattle Dept. of Transportation n.d.).

 
 
 67 
 
Safe Routes to School Program
Congress enacted federal transportation legislation in 2005 that created the federal aid
program called Safe Routes to School (SRTS). This law authorizes a federal program to
provide federal funding to state departments of transportation, which establish processes
and policies for local SRTS programs (U.S. Dept. of Transportation n.d.). Some local
programs had already started to address biking and walking to school, but this law
brought the topic to the national level. The purposes of the federal SRTS program are:
• enable and encourage children, including those with disabilities, to walk and bicycle
to school,
• make bicycling and walking to school a safer and more appealing transportation
alternative, thereby encouraging a healthy and active lifestyle from an early age; and
• facilitate the planning, development, and implementation of projects and activities
that will improve safety and reduce traffic, fuel consumption, and air pollution in the
vicinity (approximately 2 miles) of primary and middle schools (Grades K-8) (U.S.
Dept. of Transportation n.d.).

The U.S. Department of Transportation describes SRTS as a program that “empowers

communities to make walking and bicycling to school a safe and routine activity once
again” through a range of projects, from crosswalks and other physical infrastructure
improvements to programs that encourage children to bike and walk to school (U.S. Dept.
of Transportation n.d.).

In the state of Washington, the Legislature enacted a bill in 2005 that directed the state
transportation agency, Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT), to fund
local projects proposed by governmental entities (Washington Legislature 2005). The
Washington SRTS program funds projects that address the “four Es”: engineering,
education and encouragement, and enforcement of traffic laws (Washington Dept. of

 
 
 68 
 
Transportation n.d.). 18 Applications for the next round of WSDOT are likely to be due in
spring 2010 (Claybrooke 2009).

In addition, the state gave funding to Feet First, a Seattle-based walking advocacy
organization, and the Bicycle Alliance of Washington, a statewide bicycling advocacy
organization, to create the Center for Safe Routes to School in Washington State which is
an additional resource to schools or other entities interested in starting an SRTS program.
SRTS programs are typically at elementary schools. Programs at high schools are less
common (Cole 2009).

Many different types of projects meet the criteria for the WSDOT SRTS program, which
focuses on the “four Es” of bicycle and pedestrian safety: engineering, education,
encouragement, and enforcement. Education and encouragement strategies include
creating a walking school bus (a group of children who walk to school together with an
adult following a structured schedule and route) or a bicycle train (a variation of a
walking school bus), distributing educational materials about biking and walking, using
educational curricula in school, field trips about pedestrian safety, implementing events
and activities that educate and encourage children about walking or biking (e.g. school
assemblies, bicycle rodeos, walk and bike to school day, and walk or bike audits.)
Engineering improvements that can be part of an SRTS program include sidewalk and
crossing improvements, traffic calming and other speed reduction strategies, on-street
facilities for bicycles, off-street facilities for bicycles and pedestrians, and secure bicycle
parking facilities. Enforcement projects include establishing an adult and/or student
                                                            
18
Many transportation agencies, including the Federal Highway Administration and state and local
agencies, transportation planners, and advocacy organizations refer to the “four Es” as an integrated way to
frame strategies to improve safety for bicyclists and pedestrians. Engineering is about physical
improvements to facilities for bicyclists, pedestrians and drivers that will reduce collisions and improve
safety, education is about teaching safety skills and the environmental and personal health benefits of
biking and walking, encouragement, which is related to education and is about strategies to generating
interest in biking and walking, and enforcement is about implementing traffic laws More information is
available from the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center’s SRTS guide, which is online at
http://www.saferoutesinfo.org/guide/index.cfm.
 
 
 69 
 
crossing guard program at school or implementing a neighborhood watch program
(Washington Dept. of Transportation n.d.).

KCFFI may want to consult the three schools in the focus communities that have
experience implementing an SRTS program: Sanislo Elementary School, West Seattle
Elementary School and Denny Middle School. These three schools collaborated with Feet
First in spring 2006 on an SRTS program called the Go! Program. The Go! Program
objective was to increase the percentage of students walking to 25% school-wide,
increase carpooling and decrease the percentage of students who get to school by car
using a strategy that included raising awareness and excitement about biking and walking
among students and including parents in the program design to ensure appropriateness
(Carlson, Gruen et al. 2009 6). The Go! Program included a range of activities that
addressed engineering, education and encouragement, and enforcement. Table 5 below
shows the activities that were part of this program at different points between summer
2007 and 2009. (Not all activities were implemented the entire time at all schools.)

Table 6. Activities to encourage biking and walking at three focus community

schools.

West Seattle Elementary (summer 2007-2009)

Engineering: • Walk to school pedestrian audit with school and community
members to identify and rank engineering needs.
• A parent motivated by Family Health and Safety Night and
Feet First outreach testified with community members at a
pedestrian safety meeting, which led to the creation of a
crosswalk.
Education and • Bicycle education, racks and equipment. Feet First trainings
Encouragement: for school staff, parent phone calls and document translation
in preparation for Family Health and Safety Night, which
included presentation and discussion groups with 45 parents
and community members.
• Feet First conducted a month-long Safe Routes to School
Walking Fridays program, which included organizing walking
groups and providing incentives such as t-shirts from a
 
 
 70 
 
student design contest. Parent presentations and volunteer
outreach by Feet First. “Neighborhoods on Foot” walking
map of West Seattle distributed to all students.
• Walk to school brochure distributed to parents.
• Education & Encouragement: There may be funding for
additional student pedestrian safety training.
Enforcement: • Relocation of a crossing guard to a critical intersection, but
loss of a second crossing guard to illness.
• Emphasis patrols, speed reader boards and other enforcement
services.
Sanislo Elementary School
Engineering: • Walk to school pedestrian audit with school and community
members to identify and rank engineering needs.
• Buses rerouted to reduce congestion and improve safety.
• Handmade “no parking” signs across from new sidewalk to
discourage illicit crossing, which encourages parking further
from school and walking.
• Remaining funding will be used to install a new sidewalk for
one block along one route to school where children are
currently walking on the side of the road.
• Sidewalk improvements, lighting and other upgrades to a
staircase that connects the school to a major arterial funded by
the City of Seattle.
Education and • Feet First presentations and communication with parent
Encouragement: groups on walking as well as bus use and carpooling. One day
walk to school kick-off event and ongoing self organized walk
to school program in which students and family members met
along walking routes and filled out logs to record their
walking, biking, or bus trips to and from school.
• “Neighborhoods on Foot” walking map of West Seattle
distributed to all students.
• Student pedestrian safety training, newsletter articles,
encouragement game for students, and walk to school event
with the mayor of Seattle.
• There may be funding for additional encouragement similar to
the program completed the previous spring at West Seattle
Elementary.
Enforcement: • Emphasis patrols, speed reader boards, and other enforcement
services.
Denny Middle School
Engineering: • Walk to school pedestrian audit with school and community

 
 
 71 
 
members to identify and rank engineering needs.
• Deluxe crosswalk improvement with warning sign built
between a major commercial area and both Denny Middle
School and Chief Sealth High Schools. This is a common
walk route and was a priority for Denny’s principal.
Education and • Feet First presentation to PTA and participation in several
Encouragement: community meetings about pedestrian issues in the school
neighborhood.
• “Neighborhoods on Foot” walking map of West Seattle
distributed to all students.
Enforcement: • Emphasis patrols, speed reader boards, and other enforcement
services.
Source: (Carlson, Gruen et al. 2009)
 

A 2009 evaluation of the Go! Program described the results and lessons learned from the
Go! Program. Using a combination of car counts, a parent survey and a classroom poll to
evaluate the impact of the program, evaluators found that results "suggest that congestion
declined slightly during six months of the Go! Program at all participating schools. These
initial results indicate that a program that focuses on education and encouragement over a
sustained period of time, in combination with traffic enforcement and improvements to
pedestrian facilities, helps reduce car congestion" (Carlson, Gruen et al. 2009 12).
Regarding the possibility to replicate a similar program elsewhere, the evaluators
describe the Go! Program as “a comprehensive portfolio of education and encouragement
activities, enforcement techniques, and engineering upgrades that could be replicated at
any school that is committed to improving pedestrian and bicycle access. Identifying
schools and motivated leaders within schools to take advantage of this toolkit, building a
team, and pursuing funding are essential steps” (Carlson, Gruen et al. 2009 12).

Safe Walking Route Maps for Focus Community Schools

Seattle Public Schools and Highline Public Schools each offer safe walking route maps
on their district web sites (Seattle Public Schools 2008; Highline Public Schools n.d.)
Below are two examples of safe walking route maps developed by the two school
 
 
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districts. Highline Public Schools policy directs school principals to develop the maps in
consultation with parents and to provide maps to parents (Highline Public Schools 1989).
The policy states that criteria to consider for the maps include, but are not limited to
"adequate area for walking along roadways, adequate traffic controls to permit
pedestrians crossings, volume of traffic, speed of traffic, adult supervision" (Highline
Public Schools 1989). Seattle Public Schools does not have a district policy specifically
about safe walking routes. Figure 4 below is the walking route map for Roxhill
Elementary School and Figure 5 is the safe walking route map for Mount View
Elementary School. Seattle Public Schools publishes safe walking route maps for all K-5
schools. The Seattle maps are available online at
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/transportation/walk/index.dxml. Highline Public
Schools publishes safe walking route maps for all K-12 schools. The Highline maps are
available online at
http://www.hsd401.org/directory/transportation/SafeWalkingRoutes.htm.

Both the Seattle and Highline school districts promote active transportation to and from
school by publishing safe walking route maps described above and pictured below.
Promoting biking and walking to and from school reinforces the efforts of schools to
teach students about physical fitness. The KCFFI school survey includes questions about
school policies and programs to encourage active transportation and asks about student
travel mode data that will help the KCFFI understand existing efforts and potential
opportunities to support additional efforts to promote active transportation. The three
schools in the KCFFI focus communities that have already implemented SRTS programs
are additional resources to the KCFFI for information about program successes,
challenges and lessons learned.

The SRTS program is one potential model that other schools could replicate to encourage
more active transportation, including at higher grade levels where SRTS programs are
still rare. Other resources are the representatives of Feet First and the Cascade Bicycle
 
 
 73 
 
Club Education Foundation who are on the KCFFI Leadership Council and are among
the 60 KCFFI Collaborative Partners. Feet First has worked with schools on SRTS and is
a co-founder of the Center for Safe Routes to School in Washington State.

 
 
 74 
 

Figure 4. Safe walking route map, Roxhill Elementary School.

(Source: Seattle Public Schools).
 
 
 75 
 

Figure 5. Safe walking route map, Mount View Elementary School.

(Source: Highline Public Schools).

Summary of Potential Opportunities for KCFFI

This section of this paper has covered a range of relevant policies and programs that
federal and state governments and school districts develop, fund, and/or regulate that
affect school food and fitness environments in the KCFFI focus communities. The survey
responses community members will collect using the KCFFI school survey will
supplement the policy information here, and help clarify areas where the Initiative leaders
may want to focus attention as they develop the Community Action Plan.

 
 
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Several potential opportunities exist for the KCFFI to influence food and fitness in
schools through collaboration with schools or through advocacy for policy changes. I
have tried to identify areas where efforts could focus on systems change in the KCFFI
focus communities. Understanding these policies and programs – along with the survey
results – can help the KCFFI decide where to focus the Initiative’s time and other
resources in the Community Action Plan and throughout the implementation of the
Initiative. Following are my observations about potential opportunities for KCFFI.

Wellness policies: School districts in Washington adopted wellness policies in 2005. The
various elements that comprise each district’s wellness policy vary in both
comprehensiveness and use of direct language, according to a March 2009 evaluation
(University of Washington 2009). The Highline and Seattle district wellness policies both
scored higher on comprehensiveness than strength, which was consistent with all other
districts. KCFFI leaders may want to explore how to include more “specific and directive
language” throughout the wellness policies in the two districts to improve the strength of
the policies. Changing these policies would require a change at the district level. Given
how recently the districts adopted these policies, however, it may be a challenge for the
Initiative to advocate for changes.

USDA school food programs: Making changes to the federal school food programs
could be difficult, but working in coalitions with other interested organizations and with
districts may be a way for the Initiative to influence changes in the law if the Initiative
feels changes are needed. Changing the guidelines or requirements for these programs
would require changes to federal law. Congress is expected to reauthorize the child
nutrition law in 2009. Locally, KCFFI may have difficulty influencing the specific foods
included in the federally-reimbursed school food programs because the two districts
purchase foods for all their schools as part of co-operative that includes several school
districts in the region to purchase school foods.

 
 
 77 
 
Offering fresh fruits and vegetables as snacks in schools: Both the federal government
and Washington state government have programs to increase access to fresh fruits and
vegetables for snacks in schools. The federal program started in 2002 and now funds
programs at 25 schools nationwide, including one school in the Seattle district and one in
the Highline district. In addition, the Washington Legislature enacted the Local Farms-
Healthy Kids Act in 2008, which includes a similar program at 25 schools, including one
in Seattle and one in Highline. No schools in the KCFFI focus communities received
federal FFVP grants in 2008-2009 but one elementary school in the KCFFI focus
communities, Beverly Park Elementary, is an FFVP state grant recipient. This school has
experience with this program and may be a source of information about how KCFFI
could help other schools implement such a program.

Since the Highline and Seattle districts each have adopted wellness policies, the federal
and state governments have fresh fruit and vegetable programs, and the KCFFI is a
collaborative effort, the KCFFI may be an effective partner to support or expand fresh
fruit and vegetable snack programs in other KCFFI focus community schools. The
KCFFI school survey includes a question about interest in providing fresh fruits and
vegetables for snacks in schools to better understand the level of interest among KCFFI
focus community schools in incorporating such a program. All three individuals at the
three schools I surveyed in April and May 2009 responded that they are interested in
providing free fruits and vegetables as snacks in their schools.

Summer food service program: Additional research is needed to determine how KCFFI
could collaborate with the City of Seattle and the two school districts to identify potential
Summer Food Service Program sites to ensure eligible students throughout the KCFFI
focus communities can easily access a program site.

Competitive foods: Since schools decide which, if any, competitive foods will be
available; this may be an area for the KCFFI to collaborate with school administrators to
 
 
 78 
 
influence healthy food choices. The KCFFI school survey includes questions about the
availability of vending machines students can access, vending machine contents, use of
vending machine revenue, foods used as part of fundraising activities, competitive foods
in the lunchroom and the classroom, and advertising in the school. Only one of the three
schools I surveyed in April and May 2009 sells a competitive food item (yogurt).
Looking at the responses to these survey questions after all 16 schools are surveyed will
give the KCFFI a better understanding of the extent of competitive foods available in
schools, what items they sell and whether opportunities exist for the KCFFI to work with
schools to encourage healthy competitive foods.

Food pricing: Given that the USDA sets reimbursement levels for the school food
programs, KCFFI may want to focus instead on competitive food pricing if schools sell
competitive foods that the Initiative wants to discourage.

Food environment around schools: This may be an area for additional research to
identify where students go off campus to eat, what foods are available and whether
opportunities exist for the KCFFI to encourage access to healthy foods at those locations.
The 2008 UW Food for Thought report includes a neighborhood-level assessment of the
built environment in the KCFFI focus communities, including a map and analysis of the
types and locations of food sources in the neighborhoods that would be a useful resource
for such research. The Initiative may also want to collaborate with schools to find ways to
encourage students to stay on campus rather than leaving campus during the school day.

School gardens: The KCFFI school survey includes questions about whether the school
has a garden, garden size, how the garden is used, whether the site is permanently set
aside for a garden, and what factors might encourage schools without a garden to start
one. These questions will generate useful information about existing garden locations,
where possibilities may exist for additional school gardens and identify factors that would
encourage new school gardens. The three elementary schools where I conducted the
 
 
 79 
 
survey in April and May 2009 each have one or more gardens the schools use for
educational purposes. The responses to these survey questions can help KCFFI
understand how the Initiative might best support existing gardening programs, facilitate
additional school gardens at schools that would like to start one and opportunities for
KCFFI to support sustainable use of school gardens in education.

On a broader scale, the KCFFI may also be able to identify trends or examples of school
garden use that the Initiative could use to encourage the Seattle and Highline school
districts to adopt district policies regarding school gardens. A clear district policy on
school gardens could expand opportunities for gardens at schools. One area for further
research is how to ensure school gardens are supported year round. KCFFI may be able to
collaborate with schools to develop and implement strategies to maintain school gardens
through the summer growing season when students are not in school.

Recess before lunch: The KCFFI school survey asks whether recess is before lunch to
better understand the extent to which schools in the focus communities are scheduling
recess before lunch. Two of the three schools I surveyed in April and May 2009 have
recently scheduled recess before lunch. Neither the Seattle nor Highline school district
has a policy that requires recess before lunch, although the Seattle district encourages it.
If the KCFFI leaders decide this is a strategy to support, they may want to follow up with
schools that have already scheduled recess before lunch to identify barriers they
encountered, reaction from students, teachers and staff, and lessons learned regarding
impact on student eating habits and classroom behavior.

Community access to school facilities for physical fitness and recreation: School
survey responses could be combined with the community facilities data in the 2008 Food
for Thought report from UW to give a more detailed picture of the types and locations of
recreation facilities that exist and are open to the community. Both the Seattle and
Highline districts have policies and procedures related to community use of school
 
 
 80 
 
facilities. KCFFI may want to discuss with school administrators ways to expand access
to facilities at schools in areas of the KCFFI focus communities where similar
community facilities are not accessible.

Active transportation: The Seattle and Highline school districts promote active
transportation to and from school by publishing safe walking route maps. Promoting
biking and walking to and from school reinforces the efforts of schools to teach students
about physical fitness. The KCFFI school survey includes questions about school policies
and programs to encourage active transportation and asks about student travel mode data
that will help the KCFFI understand existing efforts and potential opportunities to support
additional efforts to promote active transportation. The three schools in the KCFFI focus
communities that have already implemented Safe Routes to School (SRTS) programs are
additional resources to the KCFFI for information about program successes, challenges
and lessons learned.

The SRTS program is one potential model that other schools could replicate to encourage
more active transportation, including at higher grade levels where SRTS programs are
still rare. Other resources are the representatives of Feet First and the Cascade Bicycle
Club Education Foundation who are on the KCFFI Leadership Council and are among
the 60 KCFFI Collaborative Partners. Feet First has worked with schools on SRTS and is
a co-founder of the Center for Safe Routes to School in Washington State.

 
 
 81 
 
CONCLUSION

The purpose of this professional project is to provide the KCFFI Co-conveners, focus
community lead organizations, and the Leadership Council a survey tool that can be used
at schools, a way to collect the survey results, training to individuals interested in
conducting the survey, and a compendium of relevant policies set by agencies outside the
schools that affect the food and fitness environments in schools. Like the survey, the
policy section of this paper is intended to give Initiative leaders a snapshot of the existing
conditions and context within which schools operate with regard to food and fitness. This
paper and the school survey will provide KCFFI leaders information about schools they
can use as they develop the KCFFI Community Action Plan this summer.

In general, I think this document is unique but my methodology is transferrable to studies

of school food and fitness environments in other communities. I was unable to find a
similar document that includes information about federal, state and Seattle and Highline
school district policies that affect the schools in the KCFFI focus communities. Nor did a
survey tool exist that specifically addresses the range of topics of interest to the KCFFI.
In short, this document and the survey are unique in their relevance to this particular
Initiative, but I believe the methodology I used could be replicated elsewhere to produce
a similar paper about school food and fitness environments in other communities.

Lessons Learned
My experience working with the KCFFI Co-conveners, assessment team and other
Initiative participants to develop the survey resulted in a survey that covers a wide range
of topics of interest to the Initiative. The Initiative participants who conduct the survey
will collect useful information for the KCFFI Community Action Plan development
process this summer. This professional project will also give the Initiative a process and
survey that participants can use in the future to evaluate the impact of the Initiative with

 
 
 82 
 
regard to improving the environments in which school-age residents of the focus
communities learn and play.

In addition to the survey itself, the Initiative will benefit from relationships with local
schools in the focus communities that will be valuable during the Initiative
implementation and beyond. Participants who have never conducted a survey will gain
skills in this process that they can use for future survey work as part of the Initiative or in
other endeavors. In addition, while the survey I developed is not intended to be a
monitoring tool, the process of conducting the survey does offer an opportunity to learn
about the extent to which policies are being implemented. This provides some measure of
accountability because community members are asking questions related to the
implementation of specific policies and programs. This survey is just one way to gather
information about school environments. Future surveys could include more qualitative
surveys of parents and/or teachers to gain additional perspectives on food and fitness in
schools.

Reflecting on my experience developing and conducting this survey, my observations

about the process and future use of the survey fall into three categories: survey
development, survey format and survey audience.

Survey development: My effort to address so many different topics in a survey that could
be conducted in approximately 30-45 minutes at each school may have limited my ability
to follow up on some questions where additional information might be useful to the
Initiative. I believe this survey addresses the topics of interest to the Initiative when I
started this project and will provide good baseline information this year, but input from
assessment team members and feedback from community members who conduct the
surveys would be helpful before conducting other surveys in future years to determine
whether to use the same format and same set of questions or focus only on topics that are
the focus of the Initiative implementation.
 
 
 83 
 

One of the tradeoffs of including so many topics is that I could include only a few
questions about each topic, sometimes only one question. While this will provide
information on a broad range of topics, Initiative participants may need to follow up with
schools on specific issues as they have a clearer idea of the focus of the Community
Action Plan.

For future surveys, I would make a couple changes with regard to the draft survey
review. I tried to include in the survey only questions about site-specific characteristics of
schools. I interviewed school district staff about areas of district policy where I had
questions following my research but I should also have included someone from each
school district among the reviewers as I drafted the survey as well. Their review would
have been useful because they could easily identify specific questions that were not
necessary because they address an issue that is the same at every school or is determined
by the district or state (e.g. meal prices, participation in the school lunch program,
amount of time spent in PE). In addition, I think it would have been helpful to ask some
students to review the draft survey as well because they are more familiar with the
existing conditions in schools.

Survey format: I heard from assessment team members while revising the survey
questions that I would probably have limited time to meet with school principals, so I
made every effort to limit the number of open-ended questions and the total number of
questions. Adding other questions or more open-ended questions in future surveys would
likely require reducing the topics covered or require more time to conduct the survey. I
made minor changes to some questions following my interviews with three schools to
make the questions easier to read and to remove jargon such as “active transportation”
from the survey. If the Initiative determines more open-ended questions should be added
to future surveys, I suggest having two individuals attend each interview, to allow one
person to ask the questions and the other to take notes.
 
 
 84 
 

All three individuals I met with were able to answer all the questions in the survey, which
made the survey administration easier than I expected. Based on my experience, I feel
creating a separate food survey and fitness survey is unnecessary. For future surveys,
however, I would consider using a different survey for each school level to make the
survey more clear for the interviewer. Most of the questions apply to all school levels, but
some questions are only for elementary schools and a few are only for high schools. To
address this, I noted in the survey which questions are specifically for high schools, but a
separate survey document for elementary schools and another for middle and high
schools might be more helpful.

Survey audience: I met with the principal at two of the three schools and with the
Physical Education teacher at the third school when I conducted the survey in April and
May 2009. One topic that came up during conversations with assessment team members
and community lead organizations was whether I would also conduct the survey with
teachers, parents and students. Based on early conversations with the Project Director, we
determined the focus group for this survey would be principals or other school
administrators. The reason for this was that this survey is intended to gather primarily
quantitative information about school characteristics rather than a more qualitative or
opinion survey about school food and fitness. Such a qualitative survey could generate
useful information for the Initiative but was outside the scope of my project. In addition,
we decided school principals would be the most likely individual in the school to be able
to answer many, if not all, the survey questions and would know which other school staff
member I should contact if I needed to follow up on specific questions.

Potential Opportunities
The combination of information about federal, state and school district policies and
programs described in the previous section and the site-specific information from the
KCFFI school survey will help the reader understand why school environments are the
 
 
 85 
 
way they are, and help clarify areas where the Initiative leaders may want to focus
attention during the planning process. As described at the end of the previous section,
several potential opportunities exist for the KCFFI to encourage healthy eating and
physical activity among the student-age population in the KCFFI focus communities.

These potential opportunities vary in terms of the scope of work needed to have an
impact depending on the particular policy or program. Changing the federal guidelines or
structure of the federally-reimbursed school food programs, for example, would require
considerable advocacy work to change federal law or regulation. Such efforts may be
possible through work in coalitions that focus on such policy changes at the federal level,
for example, but local policy changes may result in more immediate systems change
during the Initiative implementation period.

One example is the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program, which is already established
at the federal and state levels. Several schools have experience with SRTS programs and
could serve as a resource to the KCFFI. The school districts support active transportation
by providing safe walking route maps, and, based on my initial survey of three schools,
this is an area of interest among KCFFI focus community schools. At least three KCFFI
focus community schools have experience implementing such a program.

Similarly, programs to offer fresh fruits and vegetables as snacks in schools may be an
area where a program exists, one school in the focus communities has a grant to
implement a program (and therefore some experience the Initiative could draw from) and
interest exists among school administrators, based on my initial survey of three
elementary schools. In these and other cases, the responses to the KCFFI school survey
will help illuminate areas where interest and/or examples of successful implementation
already exist.

 
 
 86 
 
In conclusion, I believe the information presented here about the complex layers of
federal, state and district policies, regulations, recommendations and requirements - along
with the school survey results - will give the KCFFI a better sense of potential
opportunities to work with schools to improve the food and fitness environments of
students in the focus communities. Knowing which elements of the school food and
fitness environments are determined by existing policies and using the survey to
understand the site-specific characteristics of schools can help the Initiative identify
where to focus its resources to have the greatest impact in the coming years.

 
 
 87 
 
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http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/.
U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. (2009). "Seamless Summer Option." Retrieved April 29,
2009, from http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Seamless_Summer.htm.
U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (n.d.). Interim Report on the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable
Program, Fiscal Year 2007. FNS. Washington, USDA.
U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. (n.d.). "Local Wellness Policy Requirements." Retrieved
April 23, 2009, from
http://www.fns.usda.gov/TN/Healthy/wellness_policyrequirements.html.
U.S. Dept. of Transportation. (n.d.). "Safe Routes to School." Retrieved April 22, 2009,
from http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/saferoutes/.
University of Washington (2006). Visualize Delridge: Planning for the Future of the
Neighborhood. Seattle, UW.
University of Washington (2007). We Create White Center: Neighborhood Action Plan
Seattle, UW.
University of Washington (2008). Food for Thought: Groundwork for the King County
Food & Fitness Initiative. Seattle, UW.

 
 
 91 
 
University of Washington. (2009). "King County School Districts Wellness Policy
Assessment." Retrieved May 1, 2009, from
http://courses.washington.edu/nutr531/BOH2008/BOH_timeline.htm.
UW Human Subjects Division. (2008). "Frequently Asked Questions." Retrieved April
15, 2009, from http://www.washington.edu/research/hsd/faq.php.
W.K. Kellogg Foundation (2008). Assessing School Fitness Environments. Battle Creek
(Mich.).
W.K. Kellogg Foundation. (n.d.). "About the Initiative." Retrieved April 7, 2009, from
http://www.wkkf.org/Default.aspx?tabid=90&CID=383&ItemID=5000343&NID
=5010343&LanguageID=0.
W.K. Kellogg Foundation. (n.d.). "Who We Are." Retrieved April 7, 2009, from
http://www.wkkf.org.
Washington Dept. of Agriculture. (n.d.). "Washington Grown Fruits and Vegetables
Grant Program." Retrieved April 28, 2009, from
http://agr.wa.gov/marketing/farm2school/wagro.aspx.
Washington Dept. of Health. (n.d.). "Healthy Youth Survey." Retrieved April 14, 2009,
from https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/hys/.
Washington Dept. of Transportation. (n.d.). "Highways and Local Programs: Safe Routes
to School." Retrieved April 22, 2009, from
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/localprograms/saferoutes/.
Washington Legislature (2004). SB 5436 School district wellness policy legislation.
Olympia, Washington Legislature.
Washington Legislature (2005). ESSB 6091 Transportation funding legislation. Olympia.
Washington Legislature (2008). Local Farms-Healthy Kids Act (2SSB 6483) Final Bill
Report. Olympia, Washington Legislature.
Washington Legislature (2009). 2009-11 Operating (Including the 2009 Supplemental) -
Statewide Summary & Agency Detail. Olympia, Senate Ways & Means
Committee.
Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (2009). Health and Fitness
Standards, Essential Academic Learning Requirements: A Recommended Grade-
by-Grade Sequence for Grade Level Expectations – Grades K-12. Olympia, OSPI.
Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (2009). Washington State
Child Nutrition Programs. Olympia, OSPI.
Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. (n.d.). "National School
Lunch and School Breakfast Programs." Retrieved April 25, 2009, from
http://www.k12.wa.us/ChildNutrition/NSLSBP.aspx.
Washington State School Directors Association. (2004). "School districts offered sample
policy on nutrition and fitness." Retrieved April 23, 20091, from
http://www.wssda.org/wssda/webforms/en-us/news/2004/20041215_nutrition.asp.
Weyer, W. (2009). Personal communication (SPS Nutrition Services). D. Kramer.
Seattle.
WSU-King County Extension. (2008). "Food Sense CHANGE Schools." Retrieved
April 28, 2009, from http://king.wsu.edu/nutrition/CHANGEschools.html.
 
 
 92 
 
WSU-King County Extension. (2008). "Local Farms-Healthy Kids." Retrieved April 29,
2009, from http://king.wsu.edu/foodandfarms/LocalFarmsHealthyKids.html.
WSU-King County Extension. (2009). "Food Sense CHANGE." Retrieved May 2,
2009, from http://king.wsu.edu/nutrition/change.htm.
Young, B. (2007). Affordable Rentals Vanish As Apartments Go Condo. The Seattle
Times. Seattle, Seattle Times Company.

 
 
 93 
 
APPENDIX

 
 

KCFFI Collaborative Partners, as of May 12, 2008
21 Acres
Acting Food Policy Council of Seattle and
King County
Austin Foundation
Big Brothers, Big Sisters
Cascade Bicycle Club Education
Foundation
Cascade Harvest Coalition
Center for Public Health and Nutrition,
University of Washington
Childrens Alliance
Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical
Center
Community Food Security Coalition
Community Health Centers of King County
Delridge Neighborhoods Development
Assoc.
FareStart
Feet First
Food Lifeline
Full Circle Farm
Futurewise
Good Food Strategies
Group Health Community Foundation
Hmong Farmers Association
International District Housing Alliance
King County
King County 4-H Association
King County Agriculture Commission
King County Board of Health
Mithun
Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance
Neighborhood House
Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic
Pacific Asian Empowerment Program
Passages Northwest
PCC Natural Markets
Puget Sound Regional Council
Puget Sound School Gardens Collaborative
94 
REACH Coalition
Safe Futures Youth Center
City of Seattle-Mayor's Office
City of Seattle-Department of
Neighborhoods
City of Seattle-Office of Sustainability &
Environment
Seattle Chefs Collaborative
Seattle Indian Health Board
Seattle Tilth
Seattle Youth Garden Works
Sno-Valley Tilth
Solid Ground
STEPS to Health King County
The Seattle Foundation
Transportation Choices Coalition
Treeswing
University of Washington Center for
Obesity Research
University of Washington Department of
Urban Design and Planning, Urban Form
Lab
University of Washington Northwest
Center for Livable Communities
Washington Health Foundation
Washington State Dept of Agriculture
Small Farm & Direct Marketing Program
Washington State Department of Health
Washington State University
Washington State University Small Farms
Program
White Center Community Development
Assoc.
Youth Media Institute
YMCA of Greater Seattle
 95 
 
KCFFI Leadership Council Members, as of May 11, 2008

Willie Austin, Austin Foundation and Now Is Fitness Center

Michelle Bates-Benetua, Solid Ground
Baraka Cloyd, Sustainable Urban Farming Institute
Lisa Quinn, Feet First
Mary Embleton/Mark McIntyre, Cascade Harvest Coalition
Mollie Greves, Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Centers
Kate Halstead, Sno-Valley Tilth
Laura Raymond, Seattle Department of Neighborhoods P-Patch Program and the Food
System Enhancement Team
Julie Salathe, Cascade Bicycle Club Education Foundation
Tyra Sorensen, MITHUN
Amy White, YMCA of Greater Seattle
Virgil Domaoan, White Center Resident
Aviva Furman, Delridge Neighborhood Resident
Roxanne Slattery, White Center Resident
Bethany Tate, White Center Resident
Kimi Martin, White Center Resident
Randy Engstrom, Youth Coordinating Agency Representative

 
 
 96 
 
KCFFI Assessment Team Members, Affiliation and Focus, as of January 2009

Branden Born, UW, Food/Planning

Adam Drewnowski, UW, Food/Planning
Brad Gaolach, WSU King County Extension, Agriculture (general)
Donna Johnson, UW, Childhood Obesity
Jim Krieger, Public Health Seattle – King County, Epi/King County Data
Amy Laurent, Public Health Seattle – King County, Epi/ King County Data
Erin MacDougall, Public Health Seattle – King County, assessment oversight
Brian Saelens, UW, Built Environment/Child Health
Anne Vernez Moudon, UW, GIS
Doug Collins, WSU, Farming/Agriculture
Roxana Chen, Public Health Seattle – King County, Qualitative/Evaluation

 
 
 97 
 
KCFFI School Survey Interviewer Instructions
King County Food and Fitness Initiative (KCFFI)
School Survey Instructions
May 1, 2009

Thank you for helping with the King County Food and Fitness Initiative (KCFFI) school survey.
The purpose of this survey is to learn about the food and fitness environments in the 15 public
elementary, middle and high schools in Delridge and White Center. The KCFFI is conducting the
surveys to acquire baseline information about site-specific aspects of schools. While many
policies and programs that affect students and schools are established by school districts or the
state or federal government, many site-specific programs, policies and characteristics affect food
and fitness in a specific school. This survey is intended to help KCFFI understand those things
that are site-specific.

If you have any questions, please contact Erin MacDougall at Public Health-Seattle & King
County at Erin.MacDougall@kingcounty.gov or 206-263-8804 or Don Kramer at 206.406.1325
or djk5@u.washington.edu.

Who should I contact?

Start by calling the school principal and setting up a meeting. The principal will likely be able to
answer most, if not all, questions about both food and fitness. The person you interview may not
know the answer to a question or may suggest you contact the food/nutrition services director or
someone else at the school. That’s okay. One of the instructions at the start of the survey is to ask
the person you interview to let you know if there is someone else you should talk with about any
of the questions or topics in the survey. I have already interviewed Nutrition Services staff in the
Highline and Seattle schools district offices.

What do I need to tell them when I call?

Tell the principal that you are following up on a letter mailed to all principals in Delridge and
White Center on March 10 and emailed to all principals on March 13 about a school survey for
the KCFFI. If they did not get the letter or don’t remember it, offer to re-send the letter. (Ask
Maggie Anderson at KCFFI to re-send the letter.) Ask if they are familiar with the King County
Food and Fitness Initiative. If they are not, briefly describe the Initiative and explain that you are
calling to arrange a time to meet with them to conduct a survey about food and fitness in their
school. The survey should take approximately 30 minutes.

What do I bring to the survey interview?

Bring a copy of the survey for you to read and to mark the answers on. Bring an extra copy of the
survey in case the person you interview would like a copy.

 
 
 98 
 
How to conduct the survey:

Start by writing the school, the name of the person you are interviewing and date in the spaces
provided on the survey form. Give the person you interview a copy of the Oral Consent
Statement so they can read it as you go over the introductory information on the survey form and
let them know the contact information is on that sheet if they have any additional comments after
the interview. This introductory information is similar to the information on the Oral Consent
Statement.

The statement explains how the information will be used, that the information is not confidential,
and other items the person should know before you start. It is necessary to read this information
and obtain the consent of the person you interview before you start the survey.

Read each question and, if there is a checklist answer, read the answers. Mark the person’s
answers as you go along and make any additional notes if necessary. Most questions are written
so the answer is either Yes or No or a selection from a checklist. A few questions are open ended.

One question asks whether the school has a vending machine students can use. If the person you
interview answers yes, tell them you would like to see the vending machine after the interview.
There is a checklist in the survey where you will then list what is in the machine.

The last part of the survey involves walking around the site and describing the sidewalks and
crosswalks. Do this after you finish the interview and before you leave the site. There is a space
and instructions for this on the last page of the survey. The person you interview does not need to
walk with you.

 
 
 99 
 
KCFFI School Survey

King County Food and Fitness Initiative (KCFFI)

School Survey

SCHOOL NAME:_____________________________________________________________

DATE:______________________________________________________________________

NAME OF INDIVIDUAL CONDUCTING SURVEY:________________________________

SCHOOL LEVEL (check one):

_____elementary
_____middle school
_____high school

[INTERVIEWER: READ THE FOLLOWING TO THE PERSON YOU ARE

INTERVIEWING BEFORE STARTING SURVEY - GIVE COPY OF ORAL CONSENT
STATEMENT TO THE PERSON YOU ARE INTERVIEWING.]

ORAL CONSENT STATEMENT

The purpose of this interview is to conduct a school survey to inform the King County Food and
Fitness Initiative (KCFFI). The Initiative received a two-and-a-half-year grant in 2006 to create a
multi-year action plan with the potential for implementation support. We are one of nine
communities chosen to be part of Food & Fitness, a national project of the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation. Food & Fitness believes that together we can advance opportunities for all children
and families to thrive, beginning with food and fitness and building from there. The Kellogg
Foundation sees this Initiative as a strategy for social change to address healthy eating and
physical activity and to move toward social and health equity by supporting families and children.

The KCFFI focus communities are Delridge and White Center. The organizations leading the
Initiative include Washington State University-King County Extension, Public Health-Seattle &
King County, the White Center Community Development Association, the Delridge
Neighborhoods Development Association, and the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, and more
than 50 collaborative partners committed to improving the places we live, learn, work, and play.

This survey is also part of a project that Don Kramer, a graduate student at the University of
Washington, is working on for a graduate thesis project. Mr. Kramer’s project is to develop a
survey that community members can use to gather information about food and fitness in schools.
Community members will then use the information from the survey in the implementation and
evaluation process for the multi-year grant. Community members will conduct the survey at
schools in Delridge and White Center this spring.

• Your participation in the survey is voluntary and you may decline to answer questions
at any time.

 
 
 100 
 
• The information will not be confidential. Because the project is intended to give
community members participating in the Initiative information about the schools in the
neighborhoods, the project report will include specific references to schools and
individuals who participate in the survey.
• The information I collect during our conversation will be incorporated into Mr.
Kramer’s thesis document which he will give to the KCFFI leadership organizations
mentioned above.
• The survey should take approximately 30 minutes and includes questions about food
services in your school, nutrition education, physical education programs and facilities,
and may also involve a brief observation of the school facilities for physical education
and activities at your school.

I appreciate your participation in this survey project. If you have any questions or comments after
our meeting, feel free to contact Erin MacDougall or Don Kramer. Their contact information is
on the copy of this statement I gave you.

Do you have any questions before we start?

Do you wish to participate in this survey?
YES______
NO_______

NAME OF PERSION YOU ARE INTERVIEWING: ___________________________

JOB TITLE:____________________________________________________________

HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU SPEND IN THIS ROLE?

____part-time
____full-time
____other (please explain below)

HOW LONG HAVE YOU WORKED AT THIS SCHOOL? ________Years

START of school survey.

During this survey, I will ask about characteristics of your school, and food and fitness at this
school. If I ask you about something that does not apply to this school or that this school does not
do, please indicate that by saying that it is not applicable. If there is someone else on the school
staff with whom I should speak about particular topics or questions, please indicate that and I will
follow up with them. Please answer the questions based on how you typically do things at this
school.

Section 1: Food.

1. How much time do students have to eat breakfast and lunch at school each day (excluding
time getting to and from the cafeteria)?

 
 
 101 
 

Breakfast_________minutes
Lunch____________minutes

2. Besides foods offered through the USDA school lunch program, are any other competitive
foods available in the cafeteria?
YES______
NO_______

If Yes, what kinds?

3. Do cafeteria lunches include salads or salad bar options?

YES______
NO_______
SOMETIMES______

Would you like to see one every day?

YES______
NO_______

What barriers prevent that from happening?

 

4. Would you be interested in providing free fruits and vegetables for snacks in the school?
YES______
NO_______

5. Is it possible to change the prices of cafeteria food so that healthier choices would cost less
and less healthy choices would cost more?
YES______
NO_______

6. Are food or beverage promotions and advertising allowed in the school?

YES______
NO_______

If Yes: What types of foods and beverages?

7. Does the school have vending machines students can use?

YES______
NO_______

(INTERVIEWER: If YES, ask the person you are interviewing to see the vending machine at
the end of your interview and then list items below) If NO, go to question 11.

 
 
 102 
 
Food
Chips – regular
Chips – low-fat or pretzels
Crackers/ Chex Mix
Crackers with cheese or peanut butter
Fruit or vegetable
Granola/cereal bars
Nuts/trail mix
Candy
Cookies/snack cakes/pastries
Low-fat cookies and baked goods
Other food:

Beverages
Soda (regular)
Diet soda
Fruit drink (less than 50% real juice)
Fruit juice (at least 50% real juice)
Water
Sports drinks
Iced tea, lemonade, or other sweetened drink
Whole or 2% milk (including flavored)
Low-fat/1% milk or fat-free milk (including flavored)
Other drinks:

8. If the school has vending machines, what is the revenue used for?

9. Would you be interested in seeing if more healthy items and fewer less healthy items could
be offered in the machines?
YES______
NO_______

10. Is free, fresh tap water available to students throughout the day?
YES______
NO_______

11. Does this school have a garden?

YES______
NO_______ (If NO, skip to question 15)

If Yes: How big is the garden?

12. If the school has a garden: Is the space permanently set aside for a garden?
YES______
 
 
 103 
 
NO_______

13. If the school has a garden: How is the garden used?

_____Educational purposes during school hours
_____Educational purposes in after school programs
_____Other (Please describe below)

14. If the school does not have a garden: Would you like to see a garden at this school?
YES______
NO_______

15. If the school does not have a garden: Which of the following factors would make it possible
for the school to create a garden for garden-based learning during or after school?
_____Interest from students
_____Interest from teachers
_____Interest from parents
_____Information about how to incorporate gardening into school (lessons, presentations)
_____Space available and suitable for a garden
_____Time in the schedule to incorporate a garden
_____Other (please specify below)

16. Do you have any classroom or school-wide fundraising activities that include food sales?
YES______
NO_______

If Yes: What foods are sold?

17. Is food used in classrooms as a reward?

YES______
NO_______

If Yes: What foods are used?

18. Do you have any guidelines or rules about what kind of treats can be served in classrooms for
special occasions like birthdays?
YES______
NO_______

Section 2: Food, fitness and health education.

19. What programs or class lessons are used to provide nutrition education or to encourage
students to make healthier nutrition choices? (Please list topics)

 
 
 104 
 

20. Were any student assemblies or other events held during the last year in which speakers
addressed food and health-related topics?
YES______
NO_______

If Yes, please list topics.

21. Would you be interested in increasing parental involvement in nutrition promotion activities
at school?
YES______
NO______

22. [INTERVIEWER – THIS QUESTION FOR HIGH SCHOOLS ONLY] Does this school
provide breastfeeding education?
YES______
NO_______

23. How many months of the school year do students have physical education class?
_______months
_______entire school year

24. Is there a maximum class size for PE classes at your school?

YES______
NO_______

If Yes, what percentage of PE classes are at or below that maximum class size?
______All classes are at or below maximum class size
______percent are at or below maximum class size

25. Is there sufficient equipment for PE classes?

YES______
NO_______

If No, what is needed?

Section 3: Health and fitness activities.

26. Do you have data about how students get to and from school (percentage who walk, bike etc.)
YES______
NO_______

If Yes, ask for percentage of students who do the following:

_____percent walk
 
 
 105 
 
_____percent bike
_____percent are dropped off in car
_____percent drive themselves [HIGH SCHOOLS ONLY]
_____percent ride the a school bus
_____percent ride a city bus
_____percent skate or use a skateboard
_____percent ride push scooters

27. Does this school have the following facilities that support biking and walking to and from
school?
_______Bike racks
_______Traffic signals near the school
_______Crossing guards
_______Any other? (Please describe below)

28. Does the school have any of the following programs to encourage biking and walking to and
from school?
______Safe Routes to School
______Walking school bus
______Walk to school or bike to school days
______Bike maintenance or earn-a-bike programs
______Provide free or low cost bikes, helmets and bicycle safety information

If not, would you be interested in learning more about these programs and how to include
them here?
YES______
NO_______

29. How much time do students have for recess each day?
_________minutes

30. Is recess before or after lunch?

____before lunch
____after lunch

31. Is recess time structured or is it free play time?

____structured
____free play time

32. Are the playground and other outdoor play areas adjacent to street traffic?
______adjacent to a street – no fence
______adjacent to street – with fence
______not adjacent to a street

33. Is the playground supervised during recess?

YES______
NO_______
 
 
 106 
 

34. If Yes, who is the playground supervisor?

______teacher ______other volunteer
______staff person ______combination
______parent ______other (please specify)

Section 4: Health and fitness facilities available on school grounds.

35. Does the school have the following facilities for use during PE classes or recess? (check all
that apply):
_______Playground _______ Blacktop
_______Play structures _______Indoor gymnasium
_______Grass or turf fields _______Covered areas outside
_______Track _______Water fountains
_______Any other facilities for PE or recess? (Please describe below)

36. Are any of these facilities open to community members outside of school hours for
recreation? (For example, before or after school, evenings, weekends or school vacation)?
YES______
NO_______

If Yes, which facilities are open to community members?

_______Playground _______ Blacktop
_______Play structures _______Indoor gymnasium
_______Grass or turf fields _______Covered areas outside
_______Track _______Water fountains

_______Other facilities? (Please describe below)

37. Does your school have joint use agreements with organizations that use school facilities for
sports programs and other recreation activities?
YES______
NO_______

If Yes, do you have a brochure or other document that describes these that I can have? If not,
please describe the programs:

a. Programs for children:

b. Programs for adolescents:

c. Programs for adults:

 
 
 107 
 
Section 5: Other topics.

38. Are there any issues related to safety or injury prevention at your school that need to be
addressed or improved?

39. Are there any barriers to implementing the school district wellness policies at your school?
YES______
NO_______

If Yes, please describe the barriers.

40. What does the school do to promote wellness among school staff?

41. Would you be interested in developing an employee wellness program?

YES______
NO_______

This is the end of the survey. Thank you very much for taking the time to meet with me. If
you have any additional comments or questions, please feel free to contact me. My phone
and email address are on the consent form I gave you.

INTERVIEWER – PLEASE ASK TO SEE THE VENDING MACHINE IF THE PERSON

YOU INTERVIEWED SAID THE SCHOOL HAS A VENDING MACHINE STUDENTS CAN
USE.

INTERVIEWER: IF THE PERSON YOU INTERVIEWED REFERRED YOU TO SOMEONE

ELSE TO GET ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, WRITE THE NAME(S) AND PHONE
NUMBER(S) HERE:

INTERVIEWER: Before leaving the school, please observe the availability and conditions of
sidewalks and crosswalks around the school. Describe conditions below.
Sidewalks:
______sidewalks along streets around school site?
______good conditions? (few cracks, no obstructions from trees, etc. while walking)
Other comments on sidewalks:

Crosswalks:
______crosswalks at corners around school site?
______any traffic signals at street crossings?
Other comments on crosswalks:
 

 
 
 108 
 
Oral Consent Statement for Interviewees

King County Food and Fitness Initiative (KCFFI)

School Survey - Oral Consent Statement
May 1, 2009

The purpose of this interview is to conduct a school survey to inform the King County Food and
Fitness Initiative (KCFFI). The Initiative received a two-and-a-half-year grant in 2006 to create a
multi-year action plan with the potential for implementation support. We are one of nine
communities chosen to be part of Food & Fitness, a national project of the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation. Food & Fitness believes that together we can advance opportunities for all children
and families to thrive, beginning with food and fitness and building from there. The Kellogg
Foundation sees this Initiative as a strategy for social change to address healthy eating and
physical activity and to move toward social and health equity by supporting families and children.

The KCFFI focus communities are Delridge and White Center. The organizations leading the
Initiative include Washington State University-King County Extension, Public Health-Seattle &
King County, the White Center Community Development Association, the Delridge
Neighborhoods Development Association, and the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, and more
than 50 collaborative partners committed to improving the places we live, learn, work, and play.

This survey is also part of a project that Don Kramer, a graduate student at the University of
Washington, is working on for a graduate thesis project. Mr. Kramer’s project is to develop a
survey that community members can use to gather information about food and fitness in schools.
Community members will then use the information from the survey in the implementation and
evaluation process for the multi-year grant. Community members will conduct the survey at
schools in Delridge and White Center this spring.

• Your participation in the survey is voluntary and you may decline to answer questions
at any time.
• The information will not be confidential. Because the project is intended to give
community members participating in the Initiative information about the schools in the
neighborhoods, the project report will include specific references to schools and
individuals who participate in the survey.
• The information I collect during our conversation will be incorporated into Mr.
Kramer’s thesis document which he will give to the KCFFI leadership organizations
mentioned above.
• The survey should take approximately 30 minutes and includes questions about food
services in your school, nutrition education, physical education programs and facilities,
and may also involve a brief observation of the school facilities for physical education
and activities at your school.

I appreciate your participation in this survey project. If you have any questions or comments after
our meeting, feel free to contact Erin MacDougall at Public Health-Seattle & King County at
Erin.MacDougall@kingcounty.gov or 206-263-8804 or Don Kramer at 206.406.1325 or
djk5@u.washington.edu. Thank you.
 
 
 109 
 
School District Contact Information

Nutrition Services:

Chris Neal, Director Nutrition Services

Highline Public Schools
206.433.2209
nutrition@hsd401.org

Wendy Weyer, R.D., Administrative Dietitian, Nutrition Services

Seattle Public Schools
206.252.0677
weweyer@seattleschools.org

Physical Education:

Wendy Sayan (also Nutrition Education contact)

Highline Public Schools
206.433.2458
sayanwa@hsd401.org

Lori S Dunn, K-12 Physical Education Program Manager

Seattle Public Schools
206 252 0839
lsdunn@seattleschools.org

 
 
 110 
 
State and Other Agency Contact Information

Child Nutrition Services

Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction
360.725.6200

Lisa Rakoz, Program Supervisor

Health and Fitness Education
Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction
360.725.4977
lisa.rakoz@k12.wa.us

Farm-to-School Program

Tricia Sexton Kovacs

WSDA Farm-to-School Program
360.902.2029
tkovacs@agr.wa.gov

Washington Grown Fruits and Vegetables Grant Program

Gaye Lynn MacDonald

Administrator, OSPI WA Grown Program
360.510.9773
glmacdonald@gmail.com

Summer Food Service Program (City of Seattle)

Deborah Harris
City of Seattle Human Services Department (Summer Food Service Program)
206.684.8852
childrenandfamilies@seattle.gov

 
 
 111 
 
Safe Routes to School/Active Transportation Resources

Feet First, a Seattle-based walking advocacy organization, and the Bicycle Alliance of
Washington, a statewide bicycling advocacy organization, created the Center for Safe
Routes to School in Washington State as a resource about SRTS programs.

Center for Safe Routes to School in Washington State

www.saferoutes-wa.org
bike@saferoutes-wa.org
206.224.9252
walk@saferoutes-wa.org
206.652.2310

Feet First
Jen Cole, Safe Routes to School Program Director
314 1st Avenue South
Seattle, WA 98104
206.652.2310
www.feetfirst.info

Bicycle Alliance of Washington

(see Center for Safe Routes to School in Washington State info above)

Washington Department of Transportation SRTS Program

Charlotte Claybrooke, Safe Routes to School Coordinator
ClaybrC@wsdot.wa.gov
360.705.7302
www.wsdot.wa.gov/localprograms/saferoutes/

National Center for Safe Routes is a national clearinghouse of information about SRTS.
www.saferoutesinfo.org

 
 
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Highline Public Schools nutrition standards

 
 
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Seattle Public Schools distribution and sales of competitive foods procedure

 
 
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Seattle Public Schools nutrition education procedure

 
 
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