By Natalie Morales
Enquirer staff writer

Students returning to St. Paul School in Florence this fall will have new health and fitness programs because of an almost $12,000 grant the school received from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.

This is the first year the foundation offered Coordinated School Health Grants. They were available to Kentucky schools that met the guidelines and completed proposals listing plans for health programs, said Rita Moya, the foundation's executive director.

"The proposals had to be specific because we wanted a detailed budget proposal of how the schools would spend the money if they got it," she said.

The foundation is supplying the grants to help increase students' overall fitness and health status, which would positively affect their achievement, Moya said.

St. Paul's proposal focused on areas such as obesity prevention, nutrition, substance abuse and emotional problems regarding body image, said Nonda Strasburger, St. Paul's counselor and a grant-writing team member.

One activity the school proposed is the Panther Walk, Strasburger said. St. Paul students, whose mascot is a panther, will walk around the school and get a paw print sticker for every four miles they walk.

"We want to offer incentives that will be fun but will also benefit the program," she said. "The health problems we have are not an easy fix."

The school also will host safety and nutrition fairs and speakers. Information on fad diets versus healthy eating will also be presented.

"We're not saying that ice cream once in a while is a bad thing," she said. "It's just that it should be in moderation."

Representatives from each school receiving a grant attended a two-day session in June to learn new ways to integrate better health into their schools.

Attendees focused first on their own health and then learned how to apply personal health topics to schools and local communities.

St. Paul students and faculty will have their body mass indexes calculated at the beginning and end of the school year.

"Doing these programs will do no good unless we have a baseline and an end result to compare," she said.

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E-mail nmorales@enquirer.com