By 2014, Indiana public schools are required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and Public Law 221, the state's K-12 comprehensive accountability system, to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) by assuring that all students achieve proficiency in mathematics and language arts, demonstrate high attendance and graduation rates, and under the direction of a broad-based school/community steering committee submit an improvement plan to the Indiana Department of Education and a state-approved accrediting agency. According to various school improvement models, the school/community steering committee should include all stakeholder groups: administrators, licensed and non-instructional staff, parents, community members, and when appropriate students. However, non-instruction staff members are many times excluded or under-represented in the school's efforts to improve. This descriptive study was conducted to investigate the extent to which non-instructional public school employees are included in school improvement efforts. A survey was emailed to randomly selected public elementary, middle, and high school principals in Indiana. The researcher sought to understand the degree to which non-instructional staff participate in school improvement groups and activities, the tasks assigned and completed by non-instructional staff that participate, factors that limit participation in school improvement activities, and principals' perceptions regarding the value added by non-instructional staff to school improvement efforts. Responses from the survey were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The researcher found few studies in the current literature that investigated the role non-instructional staff play in school improvement. The findings from this study were discussed and used to establish new understanding in the area of stakeholder involvement, specifically with non-instructional employees, in the school improvement process. Recommendations were made to administrators and school improvement teams for ways to include non-instructional staff in efforts to achieve the school's goals as well as a recommendation for additional research in this area. / Department of Educational Leadership

The purpose of this study was to determine the status of health promotion activities provided by Indiana public school corporations for their employees and the impact of corporation leadership on the provision of these activities. The subjects of this study were Indiana public school superintendents. All 291 superintendents were mailed the survey instrument created by the researcher for this study and there were 227 (78%) responses.The results showed that 54% of the responding Indiana school corporations provided some type of health promotion activity for employees on a corporation-wide basis. The primary reason school corporations provided health promotion activities for employees was to keep employees healthy. The major impediment in providing health promotion activities for employees was a lack of resources. School corporations in rural settings were less likely to provide health promotion activities for employees. School corporations were more likely to provide health promotion activities for employees as the number of full-time employees increased. This study also found a relationship between the importance a superintendent placed on providing health promotion activities for employees and the provision of those activities in a school corporation. As worksites, Indiana public school corporations have not met the national goals and objectives for worksites found in Healthy People 2010. / Department of Educational Leadership