With mounting childhood obesity and diabetes rates, Gilroy High
School students will have to take an extra year or two of physical
education until they pass a state-mandated physical fitness
test.
With mounting childhood obesity and diabetes rates, Gilroy High School students will have to take an extra year or two of physical education until they pass a state-mandated physical fitness test.
Gilroy had the highest rate of childhood obesity in Santa Clara County in 2004 – 31 percent – according to kidsdata.org, a Web site maintained by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health.
A survey conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that childhood obesity rates have more than quadrupled in elementary school children and have tripled in middle and high school children since 1970.
Last year, only one quarter of GHS freshman passed all six measures of the California physical fitness assessment, called the FitnessGram. In Gilroy, 38 percent of seventh-graders and 18 percent of fifth-graders passed all six assessments last year.
Before July 2007, GHS students were required to take only two years of PE, regardless of whether or not they passed the FitnessGram. After-school sports could count for the second year.
A bill passed by the state Senate this year changes that. Introduced by state Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch, the new law specifies that starting this school year, students will have to complete additional PE instruction if they don’t pass the FitnessGram.
The bill aims to prevent many of the ailments that plague Americans by enforcing good health practices in the schools, said Mufaddal Ezzy, Torlakson’s legislative aide.
“There needs to be some state standard so that districts aren’t just granting exemptions arbitrarily,” Ezzy said. The provisions of the bill solve this problem, he said.
The FitnessGram tests fifth-, seventh-, and ninth-graders on six standards of physical fitness. Completing a timed one-mile run allows physical education teachers to assess aerobic capacity. Body mass index measures body composition. Abdominal and upper body strength are measured by number of curl-ups and pushups completed. Trunk extension strength and flexibility tests complete the list of assessments.
Pat Vickroy, a physical education instructor who rotates among Gilroy’s elementary schools, sees his students once a week for 30 minutes of physical education instruction. The other 70 minutes of state-mandated weekly PE instruction are taught by classroom teachers.
“The children are pathetically out of shape,” Vickroy said. “So few of them can pass all six (assessments).”
After years of sending out students’ test results to parents and hoping for input, comments or concerns, Vickroy said that not a single parent has contacted him about their child’s performance, good or bad.
In the past, whether or not students mastered the six elements had no impact on their grades and there were no ramifications if they didn’t pass the test, said Chuck Ogle, chairman of the physical education department at Gilroy High School. The scores were used to modify the next year’s curriculum. His department emphasized cardiovascular fitness last year and hopes to see higher scores this year. Since the assessments are not given until the spring, GHS has not yet implemented the new requirements.
“The community as a whole should be concerned about childhood obesity and diabetes,” Ogle said.
“We really need to focus not just on education, but also what we can do to promote healthy lifestyles,” Superintendent Deborah Flores said.
