Webster City High School students age 16 and older will have an opportunity to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic proposed by Hy-Vee pharmacy.

The Webster City School Board approved a vaccine clinic that will be held April 23 at the high school.

“Hy-Vee Pharmacy reached out to one of our school nurses, Lea Ahrens, to see if we would be interested in hosting a vaccination clinic,” said Superintendent Dr. Mandy Ross. “So we’re working on a flyer to get out. The first dose would take place on Friday, April 23.”

Ross said Hy-Vee pharmacists and others would come to the school to administer the shots.The second dose to be given on May 17. Ross said she believed the Pfizer vaccine would be given to the students.

Ross said the parents would have to register the students through the Hy-Vee online registration. Students would have to be registered and the clinic wouldn’t be a walk-in event.

“Students will be called into the clinic as they are ready for them,” Ross said. “Then they would need to wait the 15 minutes to make sure they aren’t having any reactions.”

The clinic is only open to Webster City High School students, she said.

A proposed band and choir trip, scheduled for March 17 through 20, 2022, was approved by the board. Greta Nelson, high school vocal music instructor, and Rachel Daum, band instructor, discussed the program which would take students to Nashville, Tennessee, through Bob Rogers Travel.

Nelson said the trip would include tours of historic musical sites, as well as a clinic or instruction at one of the area universities.

“One of the main selling points for me is that the company has a payment plan that includes a ‘cancel-for-any-reason’ insurance. This gives us that safety net when life happens,” Nelson said.

The cost for the trip is approximately $843 per student. Nelson and Raum said that a number of fundraisers are planned to offset the costs for the trip. Nelson said the proceeds from the May 15 variety show would go toward the trip.

Nelson said that no student would be required to go on the trip and said she would check into options for scholarships for those students who could not afford to take the trip.

A meeting with students and parents about the trip is scheduled for April 25. The registration deadline for the trip is May 21.

School Nurse Cindi Sweedler discussed the Switch Program that is in place at the Northeast Hamilton Learning Center.

Switch, which stands for School Wellness Integration Targeting Child Health, started about four years ago. The program is for students in 4th through 8th grade. Thirty-seven schools across Iowa are involved in the program with 2, 139 youths enrolled. There are seven middle school youth ambassador teams and this year, the Northeast Hamilton 6th grade girls are one of those teams, Sweedler said.

“This ambassador team creates and implements projects for our school,” Sweedler said. “They have been attending virtual conferences.”

Sweedler is on the Iowa State University advisory board for Switch. The program is partnered with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. The 12-week program has three areas of emphasis — Doing 60 minutes of activity, viewing less than two hours of screen time and consuming five or more fruits and vegetables.

“The classroom, the lunchroom and PE are where we can emphasize these programs. The Switch program has a written curriculum that actually meets the standards for science, math and nutrition that teachers can use,” she said.

Sweedler added that the American Heart Association has joined the program and created two curriculums for science courses.

She said that the students are reading nutrition labels and are journaling what they eat. The students can also access a virtual grocery store created by ISU to then check to see if what they would buy is nutritionally sound.

Sweedler said the students had also done some cooking at school, creating healthy food options like hummus, roasted chickpeas, energy bites and veggie pizzas.

Some of the board members asked Sweedler if the program would be something that Sunset Heights Elementary could pick up. Sweedler said any elementary or middle school would be eligible to register for the program.

In other business, the board:

• approved the DHS Juvenile Court Liaison Contract renewal;

• approved the AEA Purchasing Agreement;

• approved the Timberline Billing agreement of service;

• approved the gift of a bench in memory of Trudy Helton and a tree in memory of Flo Stein for Pleasant View Elementary school; the give of Casey’s pizza coupons, Kona Ice coupons and Dairy Queen coupons;

• approved fundraising requests for the high school baseball team to sell Adrenaline Fundraising Cards and for Special Olympics to sell t-shirts.

The board went into closed session at the end of the meeting for a negotiation session as provided for in Iowa Code section 20.17 (3).