Wellness Information

Importance of Seat Time at Meals - 

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advocates for at least 20 minutes of seat time to ensure that students are able to consume enough food and nutrients to fuel their growth and learning.  Click here for a research brief to learn more.  You can also visit the CDC website for more information.

Classroom Snacks, Parties, and School Celebrations - 

All foods offered on the school campus should meet the nutrition standards set by the USDA and the Oregon Smart Snacks Standards.  This includes, but is not limited to, celebrations, parties, classroom snacks brought by parents, rewards and incentives.

Click on one of these quick and easy PDF guides for Classroom Parties and School Celebrations:

Oregon Smart Snacks Standards and Competitive Foods

All foods and beverages sold to students on the school campus during the school day, also called Competitive Foods, must meet or exceed Oregon Smart Snacks Standards. 

The law specifies that the nutrition standards shall apply to all foods sold:

• Outside the school meal programs;
• On the school campus; and
• At any time during the school day.

Why?

Improving the nutritional profile of all foods sold in school is critical to:

• improving diet and overall health of American children;
• ensuring children from all income levels adopt healthful eating habits that will enable them to live productive lives; and
• helping children make healthier choices and reducing their risk of obesity.

What are competitive foods?

Competitive foods are all foods and beverages sold to students on the School Campus during the School Day, that are not part of a reimbursable meal under the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. These foods compete with nutritionally balanced school meals. This includes:

• A la carte food sales
• Student stores/coffee bars
• Fundraising
• Vending machines

Where do the standards apply?

On the school campus: all areas of the property under the jurisdiction of the school that are accessible to students during the school day.

When do the standards apply?

During the school day, which is the period from the midnight before, through extended school hours for activities such as clubs, yearbook, athletic practices, band, and drama rehearsals.

Standards do not apply at athletic events, theater performances and recitals or other evening gatherings where parents/community members are significant parts of the audience.

Need help determining if Smart Snacks Standards apply to your situation? See this flowchart.

How are the Smart Snack regulations monitored?

The District’s Local Wellness Policy leadership monitors building compliance throughout the year. This information is reported to the Local Wellness Committee for discussion and can be addressed in the next policy update.

Oregon Department of Education reviews the Local Wellness Committee documentation, Triennial Assessments, and Oregon Smart Snack calculators for each food item, during the Nutrition Departments Administrative Review (State Audit) for NSLP and SBP.

Headspace for Educators - Headspace, a mental health, sleep, and meditation app, offers free access to K-12 teachers and supporting staff. 

Safe Routes to School - The Beaverton Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program is all about creating safe, convenient and fun opportunities for students to walk and roll (skateboard, bike, scooter and bus) to and from school. This is important for the health and safety of our kids and to foster the creation of livable, vibrant communities. The SRTS program aims to increase physical activity and improve unsafe walking and bicycling conditions.

BSD Brainboost - Movement breaks, dances, and minute-to-win-it challenges to support physical activity in the classroom.

CDC Tips for Teachers - Promoting Healthy Eating & Physical Activity in the Classroom

Oregon School Wellness

Alliance for a Healthier Generation

USDA Nutrition Standards for School Meals

USDA Choose My Plate

A PDF Version of the report can be found at this link: Triennial Assessment Report 2025

Beaverton School District’s Local School Wellness Policy

Triennial Assessment Report

Beaverton School District conducted a triennial assessment of the Local School Wellness Policy (LSWP) in the Spring of 2025. A triennial assessment of the LSWP is required every three years after the initial implementation date of July 1, 2017.

The assessment must include the following:

1. The extent to which schools under the jurisdiction of the district are in compliance with the policy;
2. The extent to which the district’s policy compares to model local school wellness policy; and
3. A description of the progress made in attaining the goals of the district’s policy.

 

The following report was prepared by Kayla Petersen, RDN, Wellness Coordinator for the Beaverton School District, and reviewed by Charity Ralls, MS, RDN, Beaverton School District Nutrition Services Administrator.

Report was made available for review by the public on the BSD Nutrition Wellness Information Webpage on June 18th, 2025.

Assessment Tool

The assessment tool used for this report was the WellSAT. The WellSAT is a nationally recognized and accepted tool for analyzing the above listed criteria required in a triennial assessment.

There are four parts to the WellSAT Assessment tool:

1.      WellSAT Policy - a quantitative coding system to score wellness policies. The LSWP is scored based on its comprehensiveness and strength. There are Federally required policies to every LSWP and additional recommended items.

2.      WellSAT Practice - a tool used to assess the implementation of policies at the District and school level.

3.      WellSAT Practice Scorecard – a report that compares the Policy and Practice scores for each item. Each pair of responses is compared and linked to an outcome.

4.      Summary of Findings

 Methods

1.      The WellSAT Policy was completed by the Wellness Coordinator, designated by the Nutrition Services Administrator as responsible for ensuring policy compliance. The policy was scored using the WellSAT Policy online tool and the District scorecard is included with this report.

2.      District staff specializing in areas of Nutrition Services operations, school-level administration, or curriculum were interviewed for relevant areas, and a principal survey was conducted using questions from the WellSAT Practice tool. The survey was provided to Principals in April of 2025 and just over 90% of schools responded, a 7% increase from the previous assessment. The interview and survey responses were used to score the WellSAT Practice tool, which is intended to identify how thoroughly the LSWP is being implemented in schools. The WellSAT Practice Scorecard relates policy to practice, showing where the district has strong policies and aligned practices, where policy and implementation are out of alignment, and where there are opportunities for growth.

3.      A comparison of the WellSAT Policy scorecard and the WellSAT Practice responses was created by the WellSAT software. A copy of the WellSAT Practice Scorecard is included with this report.

WellSAT Policy Score

The District’s overall LSWP policy scores were 81 for Total Comprehensiveness and 55 for Total Strength. It is important to note that when this tool was tested on a sample of 50 school districts the average comprehensiveness score was 54 and the strength score was 33. The District has a more comprehensive and stronger policy than the average.

  Summary of Findings

1.      Strong Policies and Aligned Practices

As suggested in the 2022 Triennnial Assessment, a District Wellness Advisory Committee was reinstated to review the LSWP. The Policy was revised to more closely match the Model Wellness Policy from the Oregon School Board Association. The Committee reviewed the model policy over several months from January to June 2024 and submitted the revised LSWP to District Administration for review and approval by the School Board. The revised policy was readopted on February 11, 2025 and the associated Administrative Regulations were readopted on April 1, 2025. This revision improved the comprehensiveness and strength of the policy with scores increasing from 67 to 81 and 42 to 55, respectively.

Since the 2022 Triennial Assessment, the District added a Wellness Coordinator role dedicated to ensuring implementation of, and compliance with, the LSWP.

Notable areas where the District has strong policies and aligned practices include the following:

·         The Wellness Committee that was reinstated in January 2024 continued to meet through the 2024-2025 school year, adding new members in October 2024. At the time of posting, the committee consists of a varied and representative group including the Wellness Coordinator, a Principal, the Nutrition Services Administrator, the Safe Routes to School Coordinator, a school nurse, a school counselor, the Health and PE TOSA, two district parents.

·         The District created a new system to ensure all foods and beverages sold in vending machines meet Smart Snack Standards, additionally, new language was added to the LSWP to address caffeinated beverages which are sold in high school vending machines and student stores. The Wellness Coordinator worked with two vending companies to have multiple high caffeine beverages removed from vending machines.

·         District schools host a variety of wellness-focused before, during, and after-school programs including physically active clubs, student Green Teams, a Student Health Advisory Club, and several walking and biking school buses which are part of a very robust Safe Routes to School Program. One school received a grant for WalkKits from The Walking Classroom and implemented the program during the 2024-2025 school year. An additional grant has been received and another school will be receiving a set of WalkKits to start in to 2025-2026 school year.

2.      Implementation Plans for Full Compliance

There are several areas of the LSWP that are written to meet requirements, but implementation of the policy is limited or has not occurred. The following are a selection of areas that should be addressed during the next review period to comply with the LSWP requirements more fully.

·         While the Nutrition Services Department complies with USDA nutrition standards (Smart Snacks) for all a la carte items and high school vending machine contents are regularly assessed for compliance, there are additional ways for students to obtain food during the school day that are less reliably compliant with Smart Snacks Standards. Areas that would benefit from increased focus and improved implementation plans are student stores, lunch-time fundraisers, and classroom or school-wide celebrations. Requirements have been included in the LSWP for many years and shared annually with administrators and relevant staff, but compliance remains inconsistent.  These areas will be addressed through more thorough training, communication, and follow-up by the Wellness Coordinator.

·         The LSWP addresses school staff modeling healthy eating and physical activity behaviors in front of students, but Principal Survey responses indicate that this is not a strongly emphasized practice and may or may not be occurring. This could be addressed in the future by taking a more active role in supporting Employee Wellness, which is already an interest of the reinstated Wellness Committee. Both Healthier Generation and the Keizer Permanente Thriving Schools programs are active in the area and enthusiastic about partnerships that support BSD Employee Wellness in the 2025-2026 school year.

·         The LSWP encourages students using active transportation to get to school due to its many benefits, but according to the Principal Survey there is significant room to increase the number of students getting to school on foot, or by bike or scooter. Only 28% of schools have a regularly occurring Walking School Bus or Bike Bus – a transportation method where students walk or ride together to promote safety and community. The Bike Bus movement is experiencing a surge of popularity internationally which may be worth capitalizing on in years to come. The added safety is especially notable when, according to the Principal Survey, only 18% of schools feel as though they have a good traffic flow system that is void of safety concerns. The Wellness Committee could work with BSD Safe Routes to School to help promote more Walking School Bus and Bike Bus programs.

3.      Policies to Update

This section highlights areas where the District is implementing a practice, but it may not be thoroughly addressed in the LSWP.  All federally required components of the policy are already addressed, but in the next revision of the LSWP the District could incorporate stronger language around the following policy components:

Strategies to increase participation in school meal programs and purchasing local foods for the school meals program -

·         Nutrition Services has been offering monthly feature entrees utilizing local and/or culturally relevant foods and plans to continue this in the coming years. Incorporating this to the LSWP would address both BSD’s prioritization for local procurement and efforts to market and appeal to a broader range of students, both of which would improve our policy strength score.

Addressing physical activity not being withheld as a punishment -

·         The policy addresses not using physical activity as a punishment, but does not address withholding it, such as situations where teachers withhold recess as a classroom management tool.

4.      Opportunities for Growth

Opportunities for Growth indicate areas where the District has either not addressed a topic in policy or practice; or has only addressed the topic in a very limited way. The top priority area for growth in the next assessment cycle is the creation of school level wellness teams or committees at each school. Establishing a committee at every site would help further the work of the district level Wellness Committee, identify wellness champions who are passionate about and willing to engage in this work, and create new pathways for supporting both student and employee wellness.

Click this link to be taken to the WellSAT Policy Assessment Scorecard for 2025: 2025PolicyScorecard.pdf

Click this link to be taken to the WellSAT Practice Scorecard 2025 document: 2025PracticeScorecard.pdf