Bill calls for more exercise at middle school
State senator wants mandatory daily exercise to fight obesity.
SOURCE
By Michelle M. Martinez
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Middle school students in Texas would have to exercise 30 minutes a day or 135 minutes a week under a Senate bill that aims to fight childhood obesity.
Senate Bill 42, filed by Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, calls for making health education part of the core curriculum in middle schools and requiring students in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades to get regular physical activity. The bill would build on legislation passed in 2001 that gave the state permission to adopt exercise rules for elementary school students.
"Historically our schools have always played a role in ensuring the basic health of students by ensuring that they excercise, eat nutritious foods and learn how to take care of their bodies," Nelson told a Senate committee Tuesday. "Somewhere along the way, these basic health efforts have been de-emphasized, and the consequences have been disastrous."
She pointed to the one-third of more than 4 million Texas schoolchildren who are overweight or obese.
The Health and Human Services Committee, which Nelson chairs, approved the measure Tuesday and recommended that it be sent the Senate along with other largely noncontroversial bills.
School districts wouldn't receive additional money under SB 42, and it's too early to know how much the requirements would cost districts.
In 2001, Nelson sponsored the bill that required 30 minutes a day or 135 minutes a week of exercise for elementary students. Physical education had taken a back seat to academics over the prior decade as educators focused on preparing children for the state achievement test. Some schools rotated physical education with art and music classes, and some weeks children took physical education only once.
After that bill passed, the Austin school district began trying to figure out how to meet the law's requirements. In the end, school officials kept the rotation of physical education, art and music, and they have classroom teachers lead students in structured exercise time to complete the requirement.
Michele Rusnak, the district's physical education coordinator, said she needs to know more about the bill before deciding whether to support it. She wonders how it will work at middle schools, where students are required to have daily physical education classes for one semester each year. Nelson's bill would require physical activity all year.
"When you make a change like this, I think it will impact all of the middle school," Rusnak said. "It's not just impacting their physical activity and health, it will impact scheduling and counseling and everything. We've got to figure out a way to make that happen."
The bill also would require that health education, with an emphasis on nutrition and exercise, be taught as part of the core curriculum at middle schools.
In addition, districts would have to publish information about their nutrition and exercise efforts in the student handbook and on the district Web site, if they have one. They would have to report information about student health and physical activity to the Texas Education Agency.
Kimberly Avila Edwards, an Austin pediatrician, testified in favor of the bill.
"I was completely unprepared for the frightening number of overweight and obese children I'd be seeing in my private practice," she said. "I've had 4-year-olds in my practice who have weighed 150 pounds. . . . Additionally, I've had an over 200-pound 8-year-old who has had high cholesterol and high blood pressure."
Louis Malfaro, president of Education Austin, the district's largest employee organization, said Nelson's bill is another unfunded directive.
"These guys want to solve the problem of society by writing laws about them," he said. "It's another unfunded mandate. It's having to hire more teachers. Give school districts money for PE activities after school. That's when kids play sports."
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