The purpose of Health, Mental Health and Safety Guidelines for Schools is to help those who influence the health and safety of students and school staff while they are in school, on school grounds, on their way to or from school, and involved in school-sponsored activities. The guidelines recognize that the primary mission of schools is to educate students. Schools also have a responsibility for students’ health and safety while they are at school. By addressing health, mental health, and safety issues (including transportation and motor vehicle safety), schools can improve students’ academic performance today and contribute to their increased longevity and productivity long after they leave school.

Health, mental health, and safety, as defined here, are inextricably linked to student achievement. Poor nutrition, impaired vision or hearing, dental pain, sleep deficiency, substance abuse, anxiety about home life, anxiety about relations with peers, exposure to violence, and any unaddressed symptom are examples of health and safety issues associated with less than optimal achievement in school. Sometimes the association between achievement and health, mental health, and safety is obvious (e.g., an injury or illness that causes a low school attendance rate). At other times the association between student achievement and health, mental health, and safety is not easily observed (e.g., when a teacher’s health or mental health affects teaching and relationships
with students or when a student’s anxiety about a real or perceived threat of violence affects his/her attention to class work). Complementary to benefits
of optimizing health and safety to improve student achievement is the understanding that an educated populace is a beneficial factor for the health
and safety of the population.

Healthy People 2010 is the prevention agenda for the nation. It is designed to identify the most significant preventable threats to health and to establish national goals to reduce these threats. It should not be surprising that Healthy People 2010 includes many school-specific health objectives. There are 20 Healthy People 2010 objectives that are school-specific and these are listed in Appendix A. Increasing the number of students who complete high school is a Healthy People 2010 goal, as are increasing the number of schools with sound environmental policies and reducing school days missed as a result of asthma. The interwoven quality of educational achievement with health, mental health, and safety is one reason that the prevention, detection, and resolution of health and safety problems require cooperative efforts of students, their families, community agencies, and school personnel.

The primary target audience for these guidelines is the school administrator responsible for overall school or district policies or responsible for one or more components of school health and safety at the school site or district level. Undoubtedly, many others who play a role in the assessment, planning, or improvement of school health and safety programs or in advocacy efforts related to school health and safety programs will also find these guidelines helpful. These include school health professionals, educators, school board members, parents, other community members (including transportation officials and child advocates), legislators at all levels, professionals in government departments (e.g., education, health, safety, transportation, justice, and labor), and students themselves.

Many schools and districts have practices and policies in place that are consistent with guidelines recommended in this collection. Most schools will find many of the remaining guidelines easy to adopt. For some guidelines, however, a school or district might not find the guidelines feasible in the short-term, given resource limitations, but will include them in their planning.

Often, documents designed as recommendations are misused as standards or measures of basic quality, particularly when no other written standards exist. Some guidelines represent minimum standards for safety and health while others represent the optimum. Each community, with the help of its own health, safety, mental health, and educational experts and community members, can and should decide which guidelines are basic, which do not apply, and which to work toward. This collection of guidelines can help community and school leaders determine the breadth of school health, mental health, and safety issues and set priorities for future actions. The Health, Mental Health and Safety Guidelines should not be used as a tool for punitive measures or legal threats.

This compendium of guidelines draws upon other published guidelines on specific components of school health and safety programs as well as on overall coordination of these programs. It provides references to these other sources, most of which provide more description and detail than are included in this document. Interested readers should refer to the referenced guidelines and standards for additional information and details.

It is hoped that these guidelines will stimulate and invigorate discussions of methods that schools and districts can use to operationalize health and safety objectives outlined here. It is not unreasonable to expect that this compendium will inspire further publications that describe model programs, provide technical assistance, and uncover best practices so that schools and school districts can attain the intended purpose of each guideline.

The Overarching Guidelines serve as a starting point because they provide a context for all guidelines that follow. To help readers view these guidelines (whether on the written page or computer screen), each guideline appears as a one-page recommendation with its own rationale and commentary. In practice, any one guideline in isolation is not truly meaningful unless it is considered in the broader context of a school health program. For example, a guideline that promotes the inclusion of healthy food items in the cafeteria may not address that students also require education on how to make healthy food choices—the latter point to be found in another guideline in another chapter. To help readers see connections, each guideline (other than the Overarching Guidelines) contains a section in the left sidebar entitled “Related Guidelines”. Here, there is a list of guidelines that the reader should read in order to learn other pertinent information related to that topic. As even this list is limited in scope, readers are encouraged to make use of the Subject Index and of the keyword search functions.

In order to describe health, mental health, and safety issues, use of some technical terms from these fields is sometimes necessary. Wherever a word, phrase, or term is used and not defined, a description is available for readers in the Glossary.

Schools work and interact with parents, guardians of students who are not their parents, and families in general. “Parent”, “guardian,” and “family” are all words that are used in this document. Sometimes when only one term is used, inference to one or both of the other terms must be made by the reader.

The terms “health” and “mental health” in the title of this document and in the content of each guideline refer to oral, physical, biologic, and psychological health. “Health” does not mean simply freedom from physical disease or pain; it describes a condition of being sound in mind and in spirit, a state of feeling vigorous, the ability to deal with physical and social stresses, and the ability to perform work (including school work), and engage in constructive family and community roles. In this document, the term “health” always connotes this full meaning and so it always includes mental health. Nevertheless, “mental health” is stated explicitly in addition to “health” in some circumstances in order to remind readers of the importance of this component of health.

The term “safety” is used throughout the document and means more than simply the absence of danger. Safety is used to describe a freedom from risk of injury and, not least, a feeling on behalf of each individual that he or she (or one’s child) is free from both real and perceived danger.

Referenced documents are listed in alphabetical order at the end of each chapter or they can be accessed through the Resources Portal. References that are pertinent to each guideline can be found at the bottom of the page. Internet sites that are recommended as useful resources for readers are also listed alphabetically in the "Related Links" section of the left sidebar for each guideline. A listing of these resources can also be obtained through the Resources Portal.

The accuracy of all Internet addresses (URLs) for references and resources was verified at the time this document was submitted for publication. These addresses sometimes change. If an internet address is no longer correct, a recommended action is to find the referenced Internet page by typing keywords (e.g., subject, author, title, name of organization) into a general search engine or a search engine that lies within an organization’s own Internet site.