| Schools are increasingly being called on to accept significant responsibility for students' ability to achieve future success, and, amidst the clamor for accountability, are challenged to find an appropriate vehicle for reform that provides opportunity and equity for all students and that addresses both health and academic outcomes. Pueblo School District 60 is "reculturing" four schools in the Central Quadrant, ensuring a continuously improving, health-promoting environment for students and staff Health-Promotion Teams implemented a six-step process model targeting changes in systems and structures, policies and practices, roles and relationships, attitudes, beliefs, and values effecting the way in which administrators lead, faculty and staff function, and students thrive and learn.; While a wide array of empirical evidence suggests the relationship between categorical health programs and enhanced school outcomes, there is a void in the literature as to what constitutes a continuously improving, health-promoting system of schooling and the potential effects of that system on school culture. This investigation provides a descriptive study of four Health-Promoting Schools, examining the processes undertaken and their effects on school culture via Performance Indices (PI) on a 48-cell Health-Promotion Matrix, and illustrates the relationship of the PI to Levels of Implementation (LOI) of four Critical Elements.; Results indicate that Health-Promotion Teams, with the leadership of a Site Facilitator and a District School Health Coordinator, can, in two years, establish an infrastructure for health-promotion, develop and implement School Health Improvement Plans (SHIPS) to address identified gaps, and make changes that result in continuously improving Performance Indices. |
