The Bay Area is a cradle of environmentalism and a region with a rich trove of health and medical research and resources. In this blog, we’ll report on the deepening understanding of how the places we inhabit and the lifestyles we adopt contribute to our own health and the health of our communities.
Lack of physical activity is contributing to the epidemic of childhood obesity (and adult obesity, too) which engulfs a third of kids ages 12 to 17 in California.
So, it should be no surprise that kids are not getting enough time in gym classes in California’s public schools, in spite of strong parent support for more physical education.
According to a survey of kids’ physical activity by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, 38 percent of adolescents don’t participate in any physical education at their schools.
That percentage masks great differences among age groups, with 12-year-olds having the highest level of participation in gym classes—95 percent of them—and 17-year-olds having the lowest level of participation—just 23 percent.
This gym class deficit has developed despite a state education mandate that requires middle- and high schoolers to have 400 minutes of PE every 10 days. The problem is, according to one of the report’s authors, Susan Babey, schools have cut back on PE because of budget shortfalls and the pressure to focus on academics and test scores. And the state doesn’t enforce the requirement, in part because PE isn’t considered a priority, she said.
“There’s been this big emphasis on achievement, especially with No Child Left Behind,” Babey said. “But the research shows that physical activity can also improve students’ attention and alertness in class.”
The report uses data collected in 2007, just before the great recession that is still battering education funding and school budgets. Babey said she has newer data from February of this year, which isn’t yet analyzed. “If I were to speculate, I would say the data would likely be worse now because of the economic downturn,” she said.
PE participation and general physical activity by kids is broken down by county in the Center's report, and Bay Area schools are on the lower end of the PE range. The average number of days of PE each week for all Bay Area counties is 2.6 days. Contra Costa schools had the most, with 3.2 days on average, while Alameda and San Mateo had the fewest, with 2.1 days of PE per week.
© The Bay Citizen, 2012
