Roel Gonzalez, superintendent of Texas's Rio Grande City Consolidated Independent School District, looked around and felt distressed. Many of the 10,000 students in his school district were overweight and physically inactive.

A passionate children's advocate, Gonzalez wasted no time. He quickly got to work implementing a series of remarkably successful changes, such as measuring students’ body mass indices, increasing exercise time at school, and expanding food offerings by including salad bars in elementary school.

Despite a multitude of challenges (Rio Grande City is a border town in one of the most poverty-stricken areas of the nation), district officials—under Gonzalez’ leadership—chose to prioritize student wellness by improving nutrition in schools and vastly increasing students’ physical activity levels, both during and after the school day.

The Gonzalez administration started by ensuring that every school had a full-service kitchen capable of storing and preparing fresh, healthy foods. Schools cut back on fat and sugar in breakfast and lunch menus, eliminated fried foods, desserts, whole milk and fat-laden salad dressings, replacing them with fruit, salad bars and a variety of healthy food and beverage options that ultimately proved popular with students.

The district devoted special attention to physical activity, incorporating an innovative and evidence-based physical activity curriculum, the Coordinated Approach to Child Health (CATCH), into the school day. To promote activity after school, Rio Grande became one of the first districts in the nation to open its gyms and other facilities when school is not in session.

“We don’t have Boys and Girls Clubs like they do in big cities,” Gonzalez told The New York Times Magazine. “So, as a school district, we had to take the initiative and use our facilities for the kids and parents, because if we don’t, they have nowhere else to go.”

In addition to increasing healthy eating and physical activity opportunities, the district incorporated “personal coaches”into its wellness initiatives to encourage children to adopt healthier habits. Under Gonzalez’s leadership the school district also:

• used funds from a Texas Fitness Now grant to increase physical fitness programs that emphasize lifelong physical activity instead of competitive team sports;
• engaged students in taste tests that yielded healthy changes in the menu, like yogurt and plain bagels for breakfast, instead of doughnuts and breakfast burritos; and
• customized menus for students with diabetes or other chronic conditions.

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