Health

Most schools lack dental sealant programs

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By CORTNEY ERNDT
Capital News Service
LANSING – Only 25 percent of Michigan’s high schools provide dental sealant programs to prevent tooth decay, according to a new report. A Pew Charitable Trust study said school-based sealant programs reduce tooth decay by 60 percent at one-third the cost of a filling. Tooth decay affects nearly 60 percent of children, Pew reported. Dental sealants are clear plastic coatings applied to permanent molars. Sealants typically last five to 10 years.

Education

More children eligible for free, reduced price lunches

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By CELESTE BOTT
Capital News Service
LANSING – Almost half the state’s public school students were eligible for free or reduced price meals during the 2011-12 school year, according to a report by Kids Count in Michigan. Forty-eight percent of students participate in the free or reduced price lunch program, according to the report, “Health Matters.”
Kids Count is a project that advocates for the health and wellbeing of children. The Michigan League for Public Policy and Michigan’s Children are the project’s partners. The percentage receiving free or reduced lunches increased 2 percent from the 2010-11 school year. Those involved in the project attribute the high, rising percentage to poverty in the state.

Education

'Food hubs' spur local produce sales

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By WEI YU
Capital News Service
LANSING – Detroit schoolchildren are eating more fresh Michigan-grown vegetables and fruit. Betti Wiggins, director of operations for food service at the Detroit Public Schools, said she started working with a local food hub about two years ago. Now the school system serves meals to about 45,000 students a day, and they include at least half a cup of fresh fruit and half a cup of vegetables, she said. “Because I have 130 schools, it’s about supply chain management, and that’s how I started to work with Detroit’s Eastern Market,” said Wiggins. “Our school and the Eastern Market have developed a crop plan – planned production by local farmers.

Education

More K-12 cyberschools could open if cap lifted

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By JON GASKELL
Capital News Service
LANSING—Legislation that would lift restrictions on the number of online charter schools that can operate in Michigan will soon come to a vote. House Education Committee chair Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, said the bill, passed by the Senate last December, will likely be voted out of committee in coming weeks. “Education is changing and it’s changing rapidly. If we don’t change, the world is not waiting,” McMillin said. “We’ve got to move forward or our kids are going to be left behind.”
The bill—part of a package of legislation aimed at revamping the education system—would eliminate limits on enrollment for online charter schools, currently at 1,000 students.

Education

Bill would require public school students to say Pledge of Allegiance, critics say requirement is costly, disruptive and difficult to enforce

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By Sam Inglot
Capital News Service
Lansing– Public school students in Michigan would recite the Pledge of Allegiance daily in the classroom if a Senate bill is passed into law. The bill, introduced by Sen. Roger Kahn, R-Saginaw, would require a school district to have an American flag in every classroom and mandate that every student recite the Pledge of Allegiance each school day. Requiring students to recite the pledge and the accompanying controversy are not new, said Arlene Marie, state director of the Michigan Atheists. And it’s not just over the phrase “under God.”
“The ‘under God’, is far less important to me than the entire sense that requiring the Pledge of Allegiance is just plain wrong,” she said. “It is divisive and there are many reasons why parents would not want their children to say the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Children are not old enough to understand an oath or a pledge to anything, she said.

Education

More phys ed, health classes could fight obesity in kids

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By SHANNAN O’NEIL
Capital News Service
LANSING- The state may require public schools to offer specific amounts of physical education at the elementary and middle schools levels, not just high school. The Michigan Department of Community Health says more physical education in schools could help Michigan’s growing obesity problem. Rep. Maureen Stapleton, D-Detroit, recently introduced a bill that would mandate every school offer physical education and health programs. The bill would establish the amount of time a student would take part in physical education during the course of the school year. The bill states that schools have a program for health and physical education for students of both sexes in all schools and that each student attending public schools that is physically able would have to take the class. The bill would allow a slow progression of more health education classes.