Assigned to ED & APPROP FOR
COMMITTEE
Assigned to ED & APPROP FOR
COMMITTEE
ARIZONA STATE SENATE
Fifty-Third Legislature, Second Regular Session
school health pilot program; appropriations
Purpose
Requires the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) to conduct a three-year Physical and Health Education Professional Development Pilot Program (Pilot Program). Appropriates $9,650,000 in FY 2020 from the state General Fund (GF) to ADE.
Background
ADE oversees Arizona's kindergarten through 12 public education systems. It supports 15 county-level education agencies, over 200 public school districts, 400 charter holders and 13 career and technical education districts.
The State Board of Education adopted the Health Education and Physical Education Standards in 1997. Standards were added to support schools in meeting the essential goal of helping students acquire the knowledge and skills to promote personal, family and community health (ADE).
The goal of the physical education standards adopted in May 2015, is to develop physically literate individuals who have the knowledge and skills to pursue a lifetime of healthful physical activity. Standards include competency in motor skills and movement patterns and demonstrating the knowledge and skills to achieve and maintain a health enhancing level of physical activity and fitness (ADE).
Health standards for grades kindergarten through 12 include eight strands of concepts: 1) Comprehension of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention; 2) Analysis of Factors Affecting Health Behaviors; 3) Access to Health Information, Products, and Services to Enhance Health; 4) Use of Interpersonal Communication Skills to Enhance Health; 5) Use of Decision-Making Skills to Enhance Health; 6) Use of Goal-Setting Skills to Enhance Health; 7) Ability to Practice Health Enhancing Behaviors; and 8) Ability to Advocate (ADE).
S.B. 1399 appropriates $9,650,000 from the state GF in FY 2020 to ADE for planning and implementing the Pilot Program.
Provisions
Pilot Program Requirements for ADE
1. Requires ADE to conduct a three-year Pilot Program to improve the ability of physical and health educators in Arizona to provide high-quality physical and health education to Arizona students to improve:
a) student health; and
b) reduce Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) costs and other health-related costs.
2. Directs ADE to establish the application process for the Pilot Program and select participants based on:
a) the availability of certified or otherwise adequate physical or health education teaching personnel;
b) the degree of support shown by the school principal for the Pilot Program; and
c) any additional factors as determined by ADE.
3. Specifies that a principal demonstrates commitment by agreeing to:
a) provide time off and arranging a substitute teacher for physical or health education teaching personnel during training periods;
b) have the school develop and implement a school wellness policy;
c) allow student fitness assessment, physical activity monitoring, nutrition behavior reporting and, at the option of the school principal, body mass index data reporting to track child obesity; and
d) allow aggregated, anonymized, privacy-protected data by grade for the school to be published for the public, ADE and its service providers.
4. Requires ADE to implement professional development if the amount appropriated for the Pilot Program is not adequate to allow all applicants to participate, in the following order of priority:
a) physical and health education school accountability A through F workgroup pilot schools;
b) schools with grades three through eight;
c) schools with a higher percentage of students likely to be unhealthy or at risk of a chronic disease, including schools with lower than average total funding per student, and lacking override or desegregation monies;
d) schools representing a broad cross-section of geographic and demographic groups and enrollment sizes; and
e) schools that opt into health and medical monitoring and evaluation in accordance with privacy, confidentiality, parental consent, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and school district and other relevant rules.
5. Instructs ADE to issue a request for proposals (RFP) to contract with qualified service providers to provide professional development services and to implement the health, medical, and return on investment monitoring and evaluation for those participating in the Pilot Program.
6. Requires ADE to develop the RFP in close consultation with:
a) Arizona's main professional association of physical and health educators;
b) organizations named in tactic 2 of the school health section of the Arizona Health Improvement Plan published by the Department of Health Services.
c) key personnel involved in youth health programs that:
i. have operated in Arizona for at least three more years in schools with primarily low income, Latino and Native American populations;
ii. have been recognized by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Presidential Youth Fitness Program;
iii. train and support existing physical education and classroom teachers and develop volunteer student leaders; and
iv. were funded by a federal PEP grant from 2012 through 2014.
7. Allows an organization consulted in developing the RFP to submit a proposal for the RFP.
8. Instructs ADE to determine the selection criteria and select, by November 30, 2019, one or more qualified service providers to provide professional development services (professional development service provider) for Pilot Program participants during the:
a) remainder of the 2019-2020 school year;
b) 2020-2021 school year;
c) 2021-2022 school year; and
d) first semester of the 2022-2023 school year.
9. Requires the professional development service provider to develop the ability of each participating school's physical and health educators.
10. Requires ADE to determine the specific objectives and duties of the qualified service provider or providers, including developing online and in-person professional development curriculum, training, materials and support.
11. Requires ADE by December 15, 2019, to consult with the AHCCCS to select one or more qualified service providers, to implement the health, medical and return on investment monitoring and evaluation of professional development services (monitoring and evaluation service provider) during the;
a) remainder of the 2019-2020 school year;
b) 2020-2021 school year;
c) 2021-2022 school year; and
d) first semester of the 2022-2023 school year.
12. Specifies that ADE, in consultation with AHCCCS, will determine the required monitoring and evaluation criteria.
13. Requires ADE to select a service provider to:
a) develop, implement and support user-friendly information systems, ideally at no ongoing cost to schools and minimal ongoing cost to the state; and
b) provide a limited number of grants to pilot less widely used equipment such as digital physical activity monitoring.
14. Establishes that all training or other materials, documents, web pages, processes, software, systems or other intellectual property developed for the Pilot Program and using state monies are:
a) considered open source and in public domain, with sufficient documentation; and
b) posted online in a user-friendly manner and made available to the public at no charge.
15. Permits ADE to withhold stipend payments, after the first year of the Pilot Program, if it is determined that the school is not following through on the professional development with improved implementation in practice or satisfactory data reporting.
16. Allows ADE or its service providers, dependent on available monies, to make reasonable changes in the allocation of stipend payments if a school's expenses for participation in the Pilot Program are higher or lower than average.
17. Permits ADE to delegate to a qualified service provider the payment of stipends to individual schools if appropriate oversight and auditing are provided.
18. Directs ADE to pay the selected qualified service providers:
a) for professional development service providers, up to $5,000 cumulatively for each pilot school for which the service provider is responsible; or
b) for monitoring and evaluation service providers, up to $950,000 in total for monitoring and evaluation of the Pilot Program, a portion of which may be used to provide payments to schools or health organizations participating in health and medical outcome monitoring and evaluation.
19. Allows ADE to use any remaining monies for ongoing associated statewide professional development follow-through scaling and reporting.
20. Requires ADE, by November 30 of 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, to submit a report that summarizes the results of the Pilot Program to date, including a recommendation on the expansion of the Pilot Program to the Governor, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House and a copy of the report to the Secretary of the State Senate.
Pilot Program Requirements for Qualified Service Providers
21. Requires each qualified service provider selected, to report findings to ADE by September 1 of 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. All data will be provided to the public and must be aggregated and protect the privacy and confidentially of individual students.
22. Requires that reports include the following information:
a) for reports submitted by professional development services providers:
i. best practices related to professional development;
ii. key obstacles encountered and how they were overcome;
iii. case studies of successful participating schools;
iv. other lessons learned for relevance to potential future improvement in physical and health education; and
v. any other factors determined by ADE;
b) for reports submitted by monitoring and evaluating service providers:
i. participating school's experience and satisfaction with the program;
ii. an analysis of changes by school in fitness, physical activity, nutrition behavior and body mass index during the Pilot Program;
iii. an identification and analysis of schools deemed potential best practice school health schools across a representative range of schools that contain practices that could be practically and cost effectively used across large numbers of schools statewide;
iv. aggregated reporting by sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic and other categories, per Every Student Succeed Act standards; and
v. any other factors determined by the ADE in consultation with AHCCCS.
23. Reports submitted by monitoring and evaluation service providers must also include optional school opt-in in accordance with privacy, confidentiality, parental consent, the HIPAA, the IRB and school district and other relevant laws and rules:
a) known or appropriate estimated aggregated and anonymized health and medical outcomes associated with the Pilot Program compared to students at comparable non-pilot schools;
b) descriptions of the higher improvement schools and the possible reasons for those improvements; and
c) estimated potential AHCCCS and other health, medical and economic cost savings and returns on investment, scaled statewide.
Pilot Program Requirements for Participating Schools
24. Permits a school that is operated by a school district, a charter school, a tribal school or any other public school to submit an application for the Pilot Program to ADE or its designated service provider.
25. Requires that as a result of the professional development services provided, physical and health educators and other health personnel participating in the Pilot Program should have the ability to:
a) develop and implement high quality, effective school wellness policy plans;
b) substantially increase levels of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity amongst students over time;
c) build effective student wellness advocacy teams to provide student-led peer assistance;
d) administer accurate body mass index measurements; and
e) introduce and use valid regular student fitness assessments, physical activity data monitoring and student nutrition behavior reporting.
26. Prohibits individually identifiable student data from being provided by schools or solicited or stored in the state or service provider databases. Student data must be aggregated and individual student privacy must be protected and maintained.
27. Requires that each school participating in the Pilot Program receive a stipend in the amounts of:
a) for the first year a school participates in the Pilot Program:
i. $1,500 for a school with one physical and health educator;
ii. $2,000 for a school with two physical and health educators; and
iii. $2,500 for a school with three or more physical and health educators; and
b) for each subsequent full year that a school participates in the Pilot Program, $1,000 per school.
28. Instructs a school to use the stiped to cover professional development participation, implementation, and reporting follow-through costs including:
a) the costs of substitute teachers;
b) out -of -pocket travel expenses; or
c) other costs to participate in training or other aspects of professional development.
29. Requires a school to make available remaining monies for use by the school's physical and health educators to implement improvements in physical and health education during the Pilot Program.
Appropriations
30. Appropriates $9,650,000 from the state GF in FY 2020 to ADE for planning and implementing the Pilot Program in the following amounts:
a) up to a cumulative maximum of $4,350,000 for stipends to be paid to schools participating in the Pilot Program;
b) up to a cumulative maximum of $4,350,000 to be paid to selected professional development service providers; and
c) up to $950,000 in total to be paid to selected monitoring and evaluation service providers.
31. Allows ADE to award grants and pay service providers as specified with monies appropriated to ADE.
32. Requires ADE to use any remaining monies not spent for the Pilot Program for ongoing statewide physical and health education professional development follow-through and scaling and reporting
33. Exempts appropriations from lapsing.
34. Becomes effective on the general effective date.
Prepared by Senate Research
February 15, 2019
JO/CP/gs