An environmental audit of Albert Lea schools found that all elementary schools allow food in the classroom. It found only one principal knew the district had a wellness council. It found that Lakeview Elementary School, Southwest Middle School and Albert Lea High School have the least percentage of students who walk to school. And it found that students need a greater selection of fruits and vegetables in cafeteria lines.

These were four of the findings in a report that, to be sure, deemed the Albert Lea School District to be doing a good job in most areas. The report was presented Tuesday evening by childhood obesity expert Leslie Lytle to 20 people at Brookside Education Center.

“Your food service is better than 90 percent of what I’ve seen,” said Lytle, a University of Minnesota professor of epidemiology and community health with a doctorate in health behavior and health education.

She has been performing school district audits for 20 years, she said. She is co-director of the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project being done in Albert Lea and is intended to be an example of healthy change for the rest of the country.

She said the Albert Lea food service is doing well under the federal rules it must operate and considering it must break even. She praised the whole-grain breads and only having la carte at the high school.

Lytle made suggestions for food service:

Increase offerings of fresh fruits and vegetables.

 Reduce access to flavored low-fat milk.

 Have fewer processed foods on la carte line.

 Have la carte items purchased on cash-only basis.

While la carte lines are popular across the country for the money they bring in to help balance school-food budgets, getting better food into schools will come at a financial cost, Lytle said, and parents must decide whether they want to shoulder that cost.

She said a study of 16 schools in the metro area found children who go to school with la carte as a cafeteria option eat fewer servings of fruit and eat more saturated fats.

Vending

Lytle praised not having vending machines in elementary schools. In places where there are vending machines — the middle school has five vending machines, the high school has six and Area Learning Center has two — no pop is offered and machines are off during select times. However, she said, sports drinks are not much healthier than pop.

Her suggestions:

 Eliminate sports drinks; move to unflavored water; increase offerings of skim milk and 100 percent fruit juices.

 Reduce processed foods in snack vending; go with fresh fruit, low-fat yogurt, nuts and string cheese.

Practices

All schools use food as incentives and two schools also use food coupons, the audit found.

It found principals at all three elementaries and the Area Learning Center allowed parents to bring in food from fast-food restaurants into their cafeterias. And it found all school except the ALC use food as some form of fundraiser, whether it is classroom, school, sports or clubs.

Lytle said people become so accustomed to common practices that they don’t consider health consequences.

“We are so used to doing that, that we don’t even think about that,” she said.

Lytle made suggestions:

Create and enforce — she emphasized enforcement — a policy that prohibits food and beverage other than water in the classrooms and hallways and keeps parents and school staff from bringing fast food into the schools.

 Create and enforce a policy that eliminates food as an incentive.

 Create and enforce a policy that ends the use of unhealthy foods as fundraisers by all school stakeholders.

Why change? She said for every additional food practice permitted a school, the body-mass index of students increases by 10 percent.

“It’s not just what they eat during the school day, but what they are learning about food in our culture,” Lytle said.

She made a suggestion about birthday treats. Instead of treats whenever there is a birthday, teachers can pick one day a month to celebrate all birthdays that month, right away cutting down on candy consumption.

Lytle also said it is a good idea to let parents know at the start of a school year which foods students and parents are allowed to bring to class, which helps avoid having teachers take away candy.

Wellness council

Among the principals, only Albert Lea High School Principal Al Root knew the district had a wellness council. One member of the audience said she is on that council and was surprised they didn’t know of its existence.

Many districts started health and wellness councils to create wellness policies as required of the federal free-and-reduced-lunch program. Many districts created councils, formed a policy, then dissolved the council. She lauded the district for keeping its council.

She said while the district’s policies are comprehensive, they need more teeth.

This is a present policy: “The school district will make every effort to provide students with sufficient time to eat after sitting down for meals.”

This is Lytle’s suggested change: “Students will be provided with a minimum of 20 minutes to eat lunch.”

This is a present policy: “Whenever possible, elementary schools should provide daily recess that encourages physical activity.”

Her suggestion: “All elementary students shall have daily recess, during which schools shall provide space, equipment and an environment conducive to safe and enjoyable activity.”

Her suggestions:

 Assemble the wellness council to include the following stakeholders: administration, food service, physical education and health teachers, other classroom teachers, nurse, parents and — she emphasized this — students.

Revise policies with input from the wellness council.

 Create a policy that describes the expected school environment, provides rationale and ensures usefulness.

Child-obesity expert Leslie Lytle’s audit of the Albert Lea schools found that the proportion of students who regularly walk or bike to school was:

1 to 9 percent for Albert Lea High School, Southwest Middle School and Lakeview Elementary School.

10 to 19 percent for Area Learning Center.

20 to 29 percent for Sibley Elementary School.

50 to 59 percent for Hawthorne Elementary School.

The most common reasons cited by principals were weather (six votes), distance (four votes), traffic (three votes), fear for safety due to crime (two votes), lack of sidewalks (one vote).

Lytle said people will be surprised how quickly students adapt to the new policies.

A sign-up sheet was passed around for people interested at forming a Vitality Project group that will review school policies and practices further.

Physical activity

Lytle said the district provides generally good access to indoor and outdoor facilities, but at only two schools can the student check out school equipment.

Southwest Middle School uses physical activity as a punishment and two elementaries withhold physical-education class as a punishment.

Her suggestions:

 Create and enforce a policy prohibiting physical activity and withholding PE class as punishments.

 Train teachers in methods to increase active time in the classroom, such as making movement part of the learning strategy.

She noted many men who played high school football won’t run because running laps was a punishment for them.

Nearly all in the audience raised their hands when asked if they walked to school as a child. Lytle made suggestions for “active transportation” of children to school:

 Find ways to increase the proportion of students walking to school, for instance with walking school buses.

 Change views on walking and biking by helping people realize that weather and distance as barriers are often more perceptions than realities.

Overview

Lytle provided a rundown of national figures on childhood obesity. The one that seemed to elicit the most concern from audience members was this: 30 percent of 9-year-olds will be diabetic in their lifetime.

“We’ve got a perfect storm of illness about to erupt,” she said.

Albert Lea school board member Sally Ehrhardt attended.

“You’ve made some really good points,” she told Lytle, “and I do think our schools are doing a pretty good job, but I think we could do better.”