A long time ago, a third-world public health department in a distant galaxy, decided to spend a very small, but significant, amount of space system maternal and child health funds to pay for the salary of the department of education's "coordinator of school health" position. They called it an inter-galaxy (agency) transfer of funds.

It was a bold and daring experiment. Yet, the plan was not well thought out: Star System Health Ed Masters were not consulted (not even Darth Goodman's, niche analysis guru -remember his articles on school health education curriculum in North Croopoola, that included the idea of a "champion," etc.). There was peril at every turn for the person who accepted the challenge.

Zia Zarathrustra, a doctorate level health educator, took the plunge and accepted the role of "Coordinator of School Health."

While Zia expected some bumps in the road, she never imagined the pot holes and concrete barriers. It was an experience we will chronicle here on the Tales form the Health Education Crypt, "School Health Wars." The Dark Side was everywhere.

In April, 3094, Zia manged to gain consensus, from the Galaxy Office of Public Health (OPH) and Empire's Department of Education (DOE), to prepare a list of the ten best Star System-wide K-12 comprehensive health education curricula (see Earth's EDC (in the City of Newton, Massachusetts Compound), "Choosing the Tools"). This list was distributed to applicant galaxy school districts who could then apply for some of the 300,000 billion digits made available (from Galaxy OPH, Moo Chan Health funds) to help implement the 2000 year old comprehensive school health education model.

One of the 11 Galaxy school districts, a major star system city on the Planet Sinister (a third world planet), applying for funds, failed, as required, to indicate which Galaxy curriculum they would implement. They continued to skirt the issue during the negotiation phase of the grant. Zia, under command from her superior, Darth Moss-Dear, tried but could not get agreement, even though Darth threatened mind melding with the start system city administrators! It turned out that they wanted the money to use a curriculum not on the Galaxy list. The Dark side was very strong.

The curriculum they wanted to use had no earth-like formative or summative evaluation data, as did the other curricula on the list. It was non-sequential, did not cover all ten content areas, had non-developmentally appropriate lessons, and did not cover the skill areas the other curricula covered. It was developed by a space physician who was the principal investigator of a Selenium Galaxy "Vascular and Green Blood" risk study. Star System Health Education specialists, galaxy community members, teachers of health, or even galaxy classroom teachers, were not involved in the development of this space physician-initiated curriculum. Rumor had it that it was a poorly modified version of the Kryonlon, Yunog Bodyhealth curriculum. Individual, categorical parts of the curriculum showed some promise, as they were, in some cases, theory-based. We'll call this curriculum "Hit Or Miss Galaxy Health Curriculum."

The curriculum was not intentionally left off the list, as no one on the Empire and Galaxy team, either from OPH or DOE, knew, or said they knew, anything about this curriculum. Information about the other galaxy curricula accepted and on the "list," was based on Earth's, USA-National Diffusion Network Curriculum, Educational Development Center, and other such lists.

Zia later learned that the space physician was funded by the Galaxy OPH to distribute this unmeasured, disjointed curriculum.

The star system city that requested the funding for the curriculum had already adopted the "Hit Or Miss Health Curriculum" in one school.

The star system's city school assistant superintendent wanted to use the curriculum. She wanted to do things her way. She had no experience in health, and her experience with evaluated health curriculum was not apparent. She chose to use her Dark Side: she called the space physician and told him, without evidence, of Zia dastardly plan to shut him out of curriculum contention - albeit the entire project decision process was co-coordinated by OPH (Arbeys ben O'Conlin) and DOE (Zia) folks. Other galaxy team members who helped make the decision to reject Hit or Miss, were not blamed.

The physician called and raised hell with the Galaxy Office of Public Health. He had strong dark side powers there and everywhere. He even called his old buddies, Darth Kirnituha and Darth Puttyparthelmoweh, not even associated with this or any other galaxy school health projects, to complain. He also complained to the Star System School of Public Health's Health Education Department Chair (The space physician moved his multi-trillion dollar project to the Star System School of Public Health, from another large local star system institution, and had a faculty association with the health education department.).

The Dark Side won this battle: Galaxy Grant funds were spent to purchase the "Hit or Miss" curriculum for three more schools on the Planet Sinister. Zia got blamed for the entire mess. The Galaxy Office of Public Health took no responsibility. Zia lost her affiliation with the Star System School of Public Health's, Health Education Department. (ZIA PLANS TO SUE; See Episode Six.)

Once upon a time there was Wabba the Putz. Wabba was a large flabby species from the planet DrugFreeSchools. After the dismissal of Jeddi Knight Albi-Ben Richard, Wabba became "Acting Director" for the Planet DrugFreeSchools, with the Empire's doe. The power went to his head. His boss, Darth Moss-Dear, was convinced (apparently through mind melding by Wabba) that he was better than Quintenrian Apple Pie; Darth Moss-Dear believed that Wabba was the only one who could deal with all the evil empires scoundrels, and thus capable of spending the scarce trillions of space money properly.