Fit Kids: New "Healthi" Kids Initiative
By: Elizabeth Harness
Updated: February 10, 2009
At School Number 12 in
"We're looking into doing morning announcements with stretches and things like that," says Michele Liguori-Alampi, principal of School No. 12
School 12 will be the model for a larger initiative to get kids fit...it's called "Healthy Kids" and it tackles both exercise and eating habits.
"We did taste tests to figure out what kinds of healthy things we could implement for our students," says Liguori-Alampi.
The effort came out of a larger committee from the Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency which toured schools and day care agencies in the Greater Rochester area to find ways to battle childhood obesity.
"There are clear things that we can do in this community, things like improving the quality of the school lunch program," says Wade Norwood, the director of community engagement for FLHSA, "how children play today is very different from how children played even 30 years ago when I grew up."
Not only has School 12 been working on a lot of these changes but it was also chosen because this school actually has one of the most diverse populations in the
"We have about 750 children now and racially, they're very mixed. We have Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic and Asian children coming to our school," says Liguori-Alampi.
Among the changes being implemented include better school food (even at the pre-school level), safer, more accessible play areas and at least 45 minutes of in-school activities a day.
"Hopefully try to enact two, three significant policies by the end of 2010,” says
"I was very excited about it because that's the direction we've been moving the last two years,” says Liguori-Alampi.
