Texas school districts offer an integrated school, parent, and community approach for enhancing the health and well-being of students. School health advisory councils, coalitions, and broadly based constituencies for school health build support for school health program efforts. Schools actively solicit parent involvement and engage community resources and services to respond more effectively to the health-related needs of students.
Originally created for community members to weigh in on sexuality education curricula, School Health Advisory Councils (SHACs), have expanded to include all areas of school health. As a result of more community involvement, during the 2009 80th Texas Legislature, two sexuality education bills were considered in a hearing, which has not occurred in over a decade. Thus, Texas Education Agency (TEA) declared the 2009-2010 school year as The Year of the SHAC. The agency offers a series of monthly training sessions on School Health Advisory Councils, often called SHACs, for school staff, parent involvement groups and community members. These trainings are conducted via teleconferencing with cities across the state. The TEA encourages SHAC members to look at data including the School Health Index, Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and School Health Initiative Project, as well as local data examining teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and diseases, including human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immune deficiency syndrome. As a result of these TEA trainings, Team Texas! has had the privilege of witnessing school districts transform. School districts that did not have SHACs created them and those who had nonfunctioning SHACs reinvigorated their program and community. These communities are now able to be accurately represented on this Council and make school health recommendations to their local School Board of Trustees. This year, we recognized five outstanding school districts who’s SHACs went above and beyond the call of duty. These “success stories” are great tools for all school districts to utilize as they strive to improve their local SHACs.
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