Nov 8, 2005 By Steve Ostrosky 4 min read

Transforming schools into families can result in improved student performance, increased attendance and reduced dropout and expulsion rates, a Mississippi school superintendent told a local audience Monday. Dr. Pat Cooper, superintendent of the McComb School District, shared the story of his district’s seven-year transformation with schoolteachers, administrators, food service staff and others during a daylong School Health Conference at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus.

Cooper discussed a coordinated school health program, a nine-component model that has been implemented over time in his district, with much success.

He said it works by teachers, administrators and staff treating all children as if they were their own.

“In McComb, we’ve never changed curriculum, it’s been the same for nine years,” he said. “We need to spend money on people. You can buy all the computers you need, but you will have some kids that need to be attached to a person.”

He said many school districts can be proud of their students’ test scores, but are not addressing the student dropout rate or teen pregnancy rates.

Too often, he said people expect parents or churches to take responsibility, but one place that all children will spend time is in a school.

“If we think someone else is going to take care of the problem, we’re nuts,” Cooper said. “If the public schools don’t work, then this nation’s not going to work.”

He said the district operates under four basic tenets: do for all children that you would do for your own, approach the school as a family by taking care of your own, establish relationships with each other and with the school, and don’t blame, just be accountable to one another.

In the health area, the school board banned most students from leaving campus for lunch, banned most students from bringing snacks to school unless medically necessary, and had all snack vending machines removed.

All the drink machines were replaced with water, 100 percent juice and milk, he said.

“Our students can buy water and take it with them anywhere they want,” Cooper said. “Our kids are drinking water like it’s going out of style.”

He said the beverage machines earned the school the same amount of revenue when the machines sold junk food and sodas.

The district also changed its cafeteria offerings and built in 30 minutes of physical education for every student everyday, he said.

He spoke about how the district was able to pay for the changes, which included billing Medicaid for services performed on students in each school clinic, developing agreements with agencies to provide staff in the school, receiving more state funding because of increased student attendance and devising creative ways to spend funds toward the program.

Cooper said that districts can’t implement all the facets of the program in one year, and school officials should look at one area to add every year.

He said viewing schools as building the community rather than serving the community can result in positive changes for students and the residents.

Kelly Loomis, school health coordinator with Steps to a Healthier PA-Fayette County, said the goal of Monday’s conference was to give school officials a chance to interact with experts in the health field as their respective districts continue to develop health and wellness policies throughout the school year.

“We wanted to provide people with success stories so they realize what they’re doing isn’t so scary,” she said. “It’s not something that can happen overnight, even though everyone is working toward a similar goal.”

She said representatives from all six Fayette County school districts attended the conference, along with school staff from Greene, Washington and Allegheny counties.

More information about the McComb program is available at www.mccomb.k12.ms.us