Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

The Healthy School Action Tools (HSAT) are a set of online tools to help Michigan schools create healthier environments. Schools that support healthy choices help students achieve their academic potential. The HSAT include the HSAT Assessment, the HSAT Action Plan as well as tools to help schools share their successes.

The HSAT Assessment enables schools to assess their school environment in the following topic areas: asthma management, healthy eating & nutrition, physical education & physical activity, social & emotional health, tobacco-free lifestyles, and violence and injury prevention. Schools can choose one, several or all topic areas to assess in any one assessment. Regardless of topic select, the assessment will include cross-cutting questions which are questions that apply to the school's health environment as a whole and/or are relevant to more than one topic area.

The HSAT Action plan is available to schools that have completed at least one HSAT Assessment. The online Action Plan assists schools in taking their ideas for change identified via the Assessment and turning them into reality.

Please see the About the Healthy School Action Tools page for a complete description of the tools and the HSAT process.

Healthy students learn better! Because students spend a large portion of their waking hours at school, the environment created by and within the school itself can have a strong impact on the health of its students. In addition, the school and school staff are usually viewed as a respected authority by parents, students and the community. Therefore, messages (both explicit and implied) delivered by the school about health are often highly influential.

The questions in the HSAT Assessment reflect current research findings on what is most critical to creating healthy school environments related to physical activity, healthy eating, tobacco-free lifestyles, social and emotional health, violence and injury prevention and asthma management (several of the most important factors for student health). Completing the HSAT Assessment allows your school to identify strengths and areas of need, and the HSAT Action Plan provides tools to assist your school in developing a realistic action plan for positive change.

The HSAT provides structure and guidance to the process of improving a school's health environment even for those schools that have already started to make changes in a less formal way.

The eight HSAT Assessment modules and the corresponding questions within each module were developed or adapted from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) School Health Index and USDA's Changing The Scene with additions and modifications by experienced staff from the Michigan Department of Community Health, the Michigan Department of Education, Michigan Team Nutrition, and the United Dairy Industry of Michigan. The eight HSAT modules are based on the CDC's Coordinated School Health Program components. Each item/question represents one indicator of a healthy school environment school. Some questions ask about the school's infrastructure and environment while others relate to specific topic areas (Asthma Management, Healthy Eating & Nutrition Education, Physical Activity & Physical Education, Social & Emotional Health, Tobacco-free Lifestyle and Violence and Injury Prevention); all are relevant for student health. The items were reviewed by experts in asthma, nutrition, physical activity, tobacco use prevention, sun safety, violence and injury prevention, and evaluation/assessment, as well as by multiple school-based coordinated school health teams in Michigan.

The topic areas included in the HSAT are those currently thought to have a large impact on the health of Michigan's students. It is anticipated that other topics will be added in the future.

The HSAT is reviewed and updated routinely based on new relevant knowledge and based on feedback from schools that complete the HSAT Assessment.

Currently, any K-12 school in the State of Michigan is eligible to complete the HSAT, whether public, private, or charter. If your school is not located in Michigan and you would still like to complete the HSAT, please contact us.

If you are not representing a school but would like to review the HSAT, please feel free to download a print copy of the form along with other associated materials from the Preview the Tools section of this website.

The HSAT Assessment and Action Plan are designed for elementary, middle or high schools or any school with any combination of grades Kindergarten through 12th grade. There are a few items that apply only to elementary schools; a few that apply only to middle schools and high schools and a few that pertain to specific grade levels. You will be asked to provide your school grade levels upon registration and your school's assessment will include only those questions that apply to your school.

Yes, it is still worth it for your school to complete the HSAT even if you are small and lack certain amenities. The HSAT Assessment and Action Plan are designed to be used by all schools, regardless of size. By completing the HSAT Assessment, you will identify areas that you can realistically change for the better and the HSAT Action Plan will provide tools to assist you in making those changes.

Although this may seem like a good idea, it really isn't for a number of reasons:

1. The HSAT was designed as a tool for a single school in a single geographic location. The questions, the assessment's overall approach, even the Action Plan are very much geared to the needs/environment of a single school. You aren't going to get meaningful results if you complete the assessment as a district.
2. The HSAT was designed so that a single school can do it multiple times. If this district team disbands, where does that leave the individual schools?
3. Overall, a district-wide approach dilutes the coordinated school health concept because you have only 1 or 2 stakeholders per school. A representative (and preferably large) school-grown Coordinated School Health Team is critical for a school's honest self-assessment and for undertaking actions toward improvement.

A better approach would be to meet as a district and complete the district-wide questions on multiple HSATs at the same time. That way individual schools could focus their research and planning efforts on the pieces that are specific to them.

The best approach to completing the HSAT is to form a Coordinated School Health Team (CSHT). This can be a newly created team; an existing team, such as a School Health Council; or a new subcommittee of your school's improvement team, management council, sex education advisory committee or staff wellness committee.

CSHT members should represent your school and community and be committed enough to school health to attend the CSHT meetings, help develop a plan and assist in implementing the actions determined to be high priority. It is strongly recommended that your team include an administrator, a physical education and health education teacher, a school nurse or other health services provider, a parent, your school's food service director/manager, and the school counselor, psychologist or social worker. We also suggest that you involve these other key people on your team: the regional School Health Coordinator, an MSU Extension staff member, a coach or athletic director, a family and consumer science teacher, a parent/teacher organization representative, a dietitian or representative from the local health department or health-related agency. If your school is a middle school or high school (or has middle school or high school grade levels), we also recommend involving a student. If your school includes only elementary school grades, finding a way to obtain student input is important, although it is not usually feasible to include a student on the team.

Begin by forming your Coordinated School Health Team (see "Who should be involved in completing the HSAT?" above). Communicate the purpose of the team and provide a way for team members to review the HSAT Assessment. This could be accomplished in a brief face-to-face meeting or could be done via email or memo, referring team members to this website to take a look at the HSAT; refer them to the Preview the Tools section of this website to obtain a print copy.

With your team, decide on which topic areas to assess. The HSAT Assessment enables schools to assess their school environment in the following topic areas: asthma management, healthy eating & nutrition, physical education & physical activity, social & emotional health, tobacco-free lifestyles, and violence and injury prevention. Schools can choose one, several or all topic areas to assess in any one assessment. Click here for description of each topic area. Regardless of topic select, the assessment will include cross-cutting questions which are questions that apply to the school's health environment as a whole and/or are relevant to more than one topic area.

Once you have decided on the topic areas to assess, register your school and provide all team members with the log in information (username and password). Registration is easy- it takes less than five minutes.

Once team members are familiar with the purpose of the team and have had the opportunity to read through the assessment, schedule a face-to-face meeting. You may want to schedule a full-day meeting or you may prefer to schedule two half-day meetings to complete the eight HSAT Assessment modules.

Prior to the meeting, assign modules or module subsections to team members based on their areas of expertise and ask them to complete their module assignment as best they can prior to the meeting. (For example, the physical education teacher might be asked to complete Module 3 which addresses physical education and physical activity programs.) Completing a "first pass" of the HSAT prior to the meeting will speed the process since some of the questions might require obtaining information from another source. The goal of the meeting is to come to consensus on all the HSAT questions to make sure the final answers reflect the school as a whole and consider priorities and limitations discussed by team members.

Completing the pre-meeting "first pass" on the web is strongly recommended. It will help team members identify which items are not complete (including flagging areas where they may want to ask for assistance from other team members). Additionally, the online version will provide automatic scoring, thus saving time in the face-to-face meeting.

At the beginning of the meeting, appoint a leader if one is not already in place. The team leader's role is to move the group through the assessment and action planning tasks.

Starting with Module 1, review each question, discuss possible answers and reach a consensus on each item. You can record responses directly on the online version (when it becomes available) if you have an internet connection in your meeting location (all you need to do is "click" in the appropriate answers). Otherwise, you can record the consensus answers on a paper copy for later data entry on the online version. (See the Preview the Tools page for a downloadable print copy of the assessment.)

If an internet connection is not available at the meeting location, designate a team member to record your answers, the one that reflects the consensus of the team. Then enter the data on the online HSAT Assessment to obtain a score (we do not recommend manual scoring due to the complexity of the conditions in the HSAT). The online HSAT Assessment does automatic scoring when you enter and save the answers to your questions.

Based on what your team learns as they complete the assessment and based on the associated score that your school obtains, your school is asked to provide at least one idea for change for each module as first step in identifying need areas.

When you have completed all eight modules plus the Summary and entered all the online data, you can officially finalize and submit your HSAT Assessment online. Upon successful submission, you will gain access to the online HSAT Action Plan. The Action Plan will guide your team in taking what they learned from the HSAT Assessment portion and translating it into a concrete plan of action with clear priorities, timelines and responsibility assignments. The HSAT Assessment should be completed and finalized before proceeding to the HSAT Action Plan. Online access to the Action Plan will be provided only after successful submission of your HSAT Assessment.

Your school will be asked to select topic areas to assess when you register. Although you can change your topic selections any time prior to finalizing and submitting your assessment, it will be much easier if your team decides topic areas prior to beginning the assessment. Currently, the topic area choices are asthma management, healthy eating & nutrition, physical education and physical activity, social and emotional health,tobacco-free lifestyle, and violence and injury prevention. Click here for a description of each available topic area.

In addition to the specific topic areas, all assessments include cross-cutting questions; that is, questions that pertain to the school environment as a whole and/or those that are relevant to more than one topic area.

The topic areas that your school selects should be based on the interests and needs of your school. Another consideration in topic area selection is the time available to work on the HSAT Assessment. Although interested in all topic areas, some schools may opt to prioritize and select one or two topics at a time to enable them to move through the assessment process in a more reasonable time frame. Schools can come back and assess new topic areas at any time.

The time it takes will depend on the topic areas you choose and how your team approaches the assessment process. A team may choose to complete only one health topic at a time or several. Regardless of the topics selected, the time involved in researching answers and arriving at consensus will be the longest part of the process.

It also depends on whether you complete the assessment as a team (all together or in a group meeting) or whether you give the various modules to team members to complete prior to meeting as a group. If you follow the recommended approach of assigning modules to team members prior to your group meeting, the first time you complete HSAT Assessment can take anywhere from 2 hours to 4 hours to arrive at consensus, with the exact time depending on the amount of discussion on each item. If you decide to hold your group meeting without any prior preparation, the HSAT Assessment will take up to 2 to 3 additional hours to discuss and achieve consensus.

The online data entry portion of the HSAT takes much less time and will also depend on topics selected. Data entry may take as little as a half hour or as much as an hour once you have your team's answers.

Log into this website with the username and password your school selected at registration. The first page you'll see is the Where You Are Now page. It will tell you which parts of the assessment are complete and which need more work. Simply click the links as instructed and begin clicking on the answers that apply to your school. You can also access the modules via the HSAT Assessment tab.

Be sure to save often to avoid losing your work. Each time you save, the assessment software will calculate your schools score for the data entered and saved to date and will make it available on the Scorecard page. For your convenience to make unanswered questions easy to locate, the assessment software will flag (with red messages) any questions that have errors or that need a response.

More detailed instructions are provided on the Assessment Instructions page, available after you log in (just mouse over the Your HSAT Assessment menu tab and click on Read Instructions).

Yes, you can edit and change answers both during a data entry session and/or at subsequent data entry sessions anytime prior to finalizing and submitting your HSAT Assessment. Once you have electronically finalized and submitted your HSAT Assessment, your answers are "frozen" and cannot be changed.

Be sure to save frequently using the Save bar located at the end of each subsection in the assessment. To avoid losing data, we recommend that you save at least once every five minutes, anytime you go from one module to the next, and at the conclusion of your data entry session.

Yes. In fact, it is recommended that a team member be assigned to complete a "first pass" of each module (with assignments based on consideration of team member expertise). In addition to distributing the work so that no one team member is overburdened, it also expedites the assessment completion as any necessary research can be done prior to the team meeting.

The online version supports this approach by allowing more the one user to enter data on their school's HSAT at the same time. Care must be taken to assign data entry to only one user per module to prevent one team member from overwriting another person's work.

Although many team members can work on the Assessment at one time, it is important that the team as a whole reach consensus on answers for each item prior to completely finalizing the HSAT Assessment and moving onto the HSAT Action Plan.

The HSAT Assessment can be completed in several sittings or one sitting. It is up to each school and individual team member assignments and schedules. Just as the Coordinated School Health Team meetings to complete the HSAT Assessment may occur as a single long meeting or two (or more) sessions, the online data entry for the assessment may also be spread out over many sessions or done all at one time. When entering data online, be sure to save your work at least every five minutes and prior to concluding any data entry session.

Yes, you can change the topics you selected to assess anytime prior to finalizing and submitting your assessment. However, there are some important consequences to changing topics. If you delete a topic you previously selected and save your change, all data entered for that topic will also be deleted. Therefore, we strongly recommend that your team make a firm decision about topics to assess before beginning data entry on the assessment.

To change your topics, log in using your username and password. Mouse over the Your HSAT Assessment menu tab and click on Select/Review Topics from the dropdown menu. The topics previously selected will be displayed. To change topics, click to select or de-select topics and then click the Save Topics button.

The HSAT Assessment questions you see depend on the topics you selected and the grade levels in your school. If your school does not have all grades K through12 and/or you do not select all topics for your assessment, not all the questions will be displayed because they are irrelevant for your assessment.

Once you are confident that your HSAT Assessment is complete and have achieved team consensus on all the responses, click on Step 5 "Finalize and Submit" under "Your HSAT Assessment". You'll be asked to complete a short checklist to ensure you are ready to finalize your assessment. Once you have read and checked the items on the list, all you need to do is click the "Click to Finalize" button.

As soon as you click the button, the HSAT validation software will check your responses to make sure they are complete and to ensure you have provided no inconsistent answers. If errors or omissions are found, a report flagging each of the problematic questions will appear. This report makes it easy for you to correct any errors. If no errors or omissions are found, you will receive a confirmation message on your screen and you will also receive a confirmation email. The confirmation email will provide further instructions about completing the HSAT Action Plan.

The best (and only certain) way to avoid losing data to time outs (or other unexpected events, such a power failures) is to save your work often - at least every 5 minutes. To make this more convenient for you, yellow Save buttons have been placed at the end of each subsection of the longer HSAT Assessment modules and at the end of each module page. You are also prompted to save your work whenever you navigate to another page.

Time outs are designed to allow users to have maximum access to server resources while they are actively completing the HSAT or navigating the website. When you aren't "active" (such as entering data or navigating the website) for a period of time, the system assumes that you have "gone away" and times you out so that it can allocate more resources to the active users on the system.

The HSAT system is set to "time out" after 25 minutes of inactivity. The network you are on or even your own internet connection often has its own time out settings (for the same resource allocation reasons). These settings will usually override the HSAT system settings. Therefore, it is not safe to assume the 25-minute window. Save often!

It is likely that your Internet settings are disabling system cookies. The HSAT system uses these cookies to identify you as a legitimate user and to serve up your school's HSAT.

It's easy to change your Internet settings.

• Open an Internet browser window.
  
  
• Click on the Tools menu item (usually at the top of the window).
  
  
• Click on Internet Options.
  
  
• Click on the Privacy tab.
  
  
• Check the slider position. If it is not already on Medium, move it to medium (using your left mouse button).
  
  
• Click the Apply button and then the Okay button to close the window.
  

If this doesn't resolve the problem, please contact the Healthy Schools Technical Support Team (healthy.schools@earthlink.net) for further assistance.

There are two reasons your school may wish to complete additional HSAT Assessments:

1. To assess new topic areas your school did not previously assess. This will provide a more comprehensive view of your school's environment.
2. To re-assess the same topic areas to measure the progress you have made.

Assessing new topic areas can be done anytime after completion of your initial assessment. It is up to your school team and your priorities.

We recommend that your school complete an HSAT Assessment using the same topic area selects two to three times in a two year period. The first assessment establishes a baseline score for the health of your school environment for the topics you selected. After working on improvements to your school environment for several months, it's a good idea to complete a second assessment using the same topic selects to officially measure the progress you have made. As you continue to make improvements a third assessment is recommended several months to a year after the second one, again to measure and mark your progress.

Although this may seem like a lot, it's important to have measurable feedback for your efforts and the second and third assessments usually take as little as two hours for your school health team to complete.

We also recommend comparing some of your Summary information, such as absences due to illness and disciplinary actions to see the degree to which these change as you make changes to improve your school environment.

Although your school can use a print version, we strongly recommend using the online version because you will not receive the key benefits of the online version. These benefits include the following:

• It is extremely difficult to accurately score the print version manually due to the many conditions associated with topic area selects and questions which are relevant only to certain grade level. The online HSAT Assessment does all this scoring for you. In fact, it calculates a new score for your assessment automatically each time your save your work, thus providing interim as well as final feedback. In addition to providing instant feedback about your module scores, this feature saves you time because there is no need to add scores manually. It also assures that scoring is correct; some modules are very difficult to score manually due to variable scoring formulas and grade level and topic conditions.
  
  
• The online HSAT Assessment allows all team members to have access to the most current version of your school's assessment. All they need to do is log in and view the assessment, rather than trying to figure out which paper copy is the most up to date.
  
  
• It is much easier to edit or change your answers based on new information or input from other team members. All it takes is a single mouse click to correct a response.
  
  
• Completing the HSAT Assessment online ensures that you answer all required questions and that you provide answers that are consistent and complete. It also makes it easy for you to find and correct any errors. Each time you save your work, the online HSAT software checks your answers and clearly flags any omissions or errors.
  
  
• It eliminates any tedious and time-consuming duplicate writing or typing. On the print form, for example, you are required to transfer information from the Your Bright Ideas in each module to the Summary section. This process which can take up to an hour or more of manual labor with the print form is done automatically in the online version.
  
  
• As you complete the HSAT Assessment online, your school's data is stored instantly on an online database. There is no need for later data entry and a second round of edit checks. This provides the capability to provide reports for your school later and for the organizations that sponsor the HSAT and this website to improve the programs and support they offer to schools based on the data you and other schools provide.
  
  
• The HSAT Support Team supports the online version and not the print version. With the online version, our support team can log in and view your answers with you to provide the best support. We regret that we cannot support use of the print version in any real capacity.
  
  
• If your school decides to complete additional assessments to measure your progress, your subsequent assessments can be viewed and compared with your initial assessments easily via the online user interface and are available to everyone on your school's team any place/any time as long as there is an internet connection available.

We continue to provide a print version because we recognize that the meeting areas where your school health team meets may not have an Internet connection. Therefore, the print form is offered to allow your team to take notes for later data entry into the online form. However, your school should not use the print version alone because it does not ensure that your HSAT Assessment is complete and that scoring is accurate.

Please contact us directly via phone or email to let us know if you've finalized your HSAT Assessment in error. We will manually reactivate your HSAT Assessment so you can resume work. However, once you have begun your Action Plan (for example, developing SMART Goals), your HSAT Assessment cannot be reopened. Therefore, if you've finalized your HSAT Assessment in error, please contact us right away.

Although some schools may have grants or funding that stipulates a submission deadline, there are no specific deadlines for completing and electronically finalizing your HSAT Assessment. However, electronically finalizing the HSAT Assessment allows you to proceed to the HSAT Action Plan - a tool to guide your school in planning and implementing actions that make a difference. Therefore, it may be easiest to keep up the momentum by completing the HSAT Assessment early enough in the school year to allow at least a month or two for planning and implementing steps for improvement through the HSAT Action Plan.

To gain access to your Action Plan, you must complete and successfully finalize and submit your first HSAT Assessment. Once you have successfully completed your first assessment you will have ongoing access to your Action Plan (even when you are completing subsequent HSAT Assessments at the same time).

If you have submitted your first HSAT Assessment, access your Action Plan by logging in to the website, mousing over the Your HSAT Action Plan menu tab and selecting Set SMART Goals from the dropdown menu. If you have already set your SMART goals, you can click on any relevant item from the dropdown menu.

The action planning process is an ongoing process. Ideally, your team will plan and complete actions to improve the school environment continually over time. The time to complete any given action will depend on the action itself, the resources needed, and the efforts of the school team.

The time it takes to plan and document your actions using the online Action Plan is small in comparison. Meeting as a team to decide on which actions to take and to plan those actions usually takes one to two hours several times a year. For any given action your team decides to implement, it only takes a few minute to enter and/or update information for any given action in the online Action Plan.

The Action Plan provides a convenient way to prioritize actions and monitor progress that is accessible to all team members regardless of their location (only and Internet connection is needed). Therefore, you should update your online Action Plan at the following times to ensure you document your actions and your progress.

• As soon as you complete your first assessment, your team should enter any important goals that you'd like to accomplish. The Action Plan provides a way for you to record your goals.
  
  
• When your team discusses or decides on new actions to implement that support your overall goals.
  
  
• When there is anything notable to report, such as significant progress made on an action or a new step that is needed to accomplish an action.
  
  
• When the action is completed. Marking an action as complete in your online action plan moves it to an online completed actions list and provides a record of your accomplishments.

Most schools actively working on change to their school environment will update their Action Plan 2 to 4 times per year.

Yes. In fact, it is recommended that planning and implementing actions be a team effort with a leader(s) assigned responsibility for each action the team decides to pursue. In addition to distributing the work so that no one team member is overburdened, distributing the work also allows for more efficient progress and promotes team solidarity.

The online version supports this approach by allowing more the one user to enter data on their school's HSAT Action Plan. Care must be taken to assign data entry to only one user per action to prevent one team member from overwriting another person's work.

Although many team members can work on the Action Plan at one time, it is important that the team as a whole reach consensus on the overall goals they wish to achieve and the actions they would like to implement to support those goals. The team should also work together to make sure responsibilities are assigned fairly and effectively.

Although some schools may have grants or funding that stipulates a deadline for some aspects of action planning, action planning is an ongoing process and therefore there are no specific deadlines for the overall process. However, as with any planning endeavor and as part of the action planning process, schools are asked to set personal target dates for accomplishing their overall goals for the actions they decide to implement to reach those goals.

The best (and only certain) way to avoid losing data to time outs (or other unexpected events, such a power failures) is to save your work often - at least every 5 minutes. To make this more convenient for you, yellow Save buttons have been placed at the beginning and end of each Action Planning step.

Time outs are designed to allow users to have maximum access to server resources while they are actively completing the HSAT or navigating the website. When you aren't "active" (such as entering data or navigating the website) for a period of time, the system assumes that you have "gone away" and times you out so that it can allocate more resources to the active users on the system.

The HSAT system is set to "time out" after 25 minutes of inactivity. The network you are on or even your own Internet connection often has its own time out settings (for the same resource allocation reasons). These settings will usually override the HSAT system settings. Therefore, it is not safe to assume the 25-minute window. Save often!

There are many advantages to your school for using the online HSAT Action Plan, including:

• Keeping the online HSAT Action Plan up to date allows all team members to have access to the most current version. All they need to do is log in and view your action plan, rather than trying to figure out which paper copy is the most up to date.
  
  
• It is much easier to edit or change your answers based on new information or input from other team members. It often takes only a single mouse click to update information.
  
  
• Using the online Action Plan ensures that you provide the key information necessary for effective action planning. Each time you save your work, the online HSAT software checks for any omissions.
  
  
• It eliminates any tedious and time-consuming duplicate writing or typing. On the print form, for example, you are required to transfer information from one action plan step to the next. This process can take hours of manual labor with the print form and is done automatically with the online Action Plan.
  
  
• In the HSAT Action Plan phase, it allows you to sort possible action items on several different dimensions with a single mouse click. This sorting capability is extremely useful in helping your team determine which actions to take first, second and so on. Print versions have no such sort capabilities.
  
  
• As you complete actions and mark them as complete on the online form, your school's data is stored instantly on an online database. This provides ongoing documentation of your accomplishments. It also gives the capability to provide reports for your school later and for the organizations that sponsor the HSAT and this website to improve the programs and support they offer to schools based on the data you and other schools provide.

We continue to provide a print version because we recognize that the meeting areas where your school health team meets may not have an Internet connection. Therefore, the print form is offered to allow your team to take notes for later data entry into the online form.

To change information you provided at registration, such as primary contact name, email address, phone numbers changes, password, and the like, log into the website using your current username and password. Click on the Update Your Info menu item. Enter the new information and click the submit button.

If the information you wish to update is not on the Update Your Info form, please contact us.

To change your password, log into the website with your current username and password. Click on the Update Your Info menu item. Enter your new password (you'll be asked for it twice to confirm it is correct) and click the submit button.

We recommend that you do not change your school's username as this is the key log in identity for your school. If it is essential that you change it, please contact us.

If your district name or school name is missing or incorrect, please contact us for assistance. If your school address is incorrect, you can update it at the time of registration by supplying the correct information or update it using the online Update Your Info page. To use the Update Your Info page, log into the website, click on the Update Your Info menu tab, provide the correct information and click the submit button.

Click the Forgot Password link located in the log in box on the home page. You'll be prompted for username. Enter the username associated with your school. Click the submit button and the password will be sent instantly to the email associated with that username.

If you are a team member other than the primary contact, please notify the primary contact for your team to request that they forward the password retrieval email to you from their email account.

Please contact us to obtain your school's username.

The best way to determine and accurately measure whether your school environment has changed is to complete the HSAT Assessment again. We recommend that you complete the first HSAT Assessment and start your HSAT Action plan sometime in the Fall. This allows enough time to implement some of the plans prior to the end of the school year. At the end of the school year, complete another HSAT Assessment selecting the same topic areas. It takes at most half the time to complete as the first assessment did. Compare your scores and make any adjustments to your action plan.

Then complete the HSAT Assessment again a few months to a year later, depending on how many changes you have implemented. To compare assessments, be sure to select the same topic areas. You may also wish to compare key metrics from year to year such as absences due to health/illness or disciplinary actions (your school provided this information in the Summary section of the assessment).

This is just a recommended schedule. The important thing is to complete an HSAT Assessment every few months to a year during the time you are actively making changes in order to get feedback on the impact of your efforts.

You can document your story online by going to http://mihealthtools.org/schoolsuccess/. When you share your school's success, you help other schools make improvements by providing concrete ideas as well as inspiration. Submit as many healthy school success stories as you like. When you arrive at the Success Story website, click on the Submit a Success Story menu tab to begin.

Learn from Other Schools. Success stories submitted by Michigan schools are published on the Michigan Success Story website (http://mihealthtools.org/schoolsuccess/) in the Review School Success Stories section. Success stories are organized by topic area or category to help schools easily find the ideas that are of the most interest and use.

Copies of the HSAT materials that you can download and print can be found on the Preview the Tools section of this website. These materials help to provide an understanding of the recommended process for completing the HSAT as well as providing details about the specific questions on the assessment and action plan.

Although the print copies are a good way to preview the HSAT and are useful when an Internet connection is not available, the final responses for the HSAT Assessment and Action Plan should be entered into the online version. The online assessment provides automated scoring and checks to make sure the assessment is complete. The online action plan provides similar edits to ensure key points are documented along with several other advantages over the paper version.

Yes, you can arrange to review the online registration and HSAT process by contacting the Healthy Schools Technical Support Team (healthy.schools@earthlink.net). We have several "test" schools set up for this purpose.

Please do not register as a Michigan school. Your registration will prevent that school from registering.

This website includes a number of resources to help schools in completing the HSAT and in taking action for positive change:

• Resource Guide - A listing of resources organized by HSAT topic area and by module to provide explanations about assessment items as well as useful information for making positive changes.
• Glossary - Definitions of terms used in the HSAT Assessment. The Glossary is also useful in defining important concepts related to a school's health environment.
• About Healthy School Environments - Information on the key components of a healthy school environment based on current research and best practices.
• About the Healthy School Action Tools - A detailed description of the HSAT process, history, and rationale.

Visit the Contact Us page to find out how to reach us by phone, email, fax or U.S. mail. Please don't hesitate to contact us to get answers to your remaining questions. We appreciate your interest in the HSAT and in improving the health of your school environment!