Physical education at PPS: PE is one medicine that’s proven to work
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Portland’s elementary and middle schools are about to lose all of their physical education programs. No one can deny these are difficult times and that Superintendent Carole Smith and the school board have a challenge in planning for a $19 million budget shortfall. But cutting PE will be a penny-wise, pound-foolish decision that will have a lasting negative impact on our kids’ lives and our community.
Physical education is vital to building healthy kids, healthy adults and a healthy community. In study after study, children’s physical activity and fitness levels have been strongly associated with healthier physical, emotional and social functioning.
Oregon taxpayers are already spending at least $781 million a year on obesity-related health care costs. Insured obese children are hospitalized far more than healthy-weight insured kids, and are more likely to be diagnosed with mental health, bone and joint disorders, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. In Oregon nearly 25 percent of all children are overweight or obese. If current trends continue, for the first time in 100 years, today’s children will not live as long as their parents. If we do not stem the obesity, inactivity and diabetes epidemics, it’s only going to get much worse.
We cannot treat our way out of this epidemic. We must move upstream, invest in the health of our children and restore quality PE throughout Oregon. No other major Oregon school district has proposed such draconian cuts in PE. Portland shouldn’t set the precedent.
Physical education is directly linked with better academic performance. Numerous studies show that not only does exercise have cognitive benefits, but that the benefits increase as the level of kids’ fitness increases: Higher fitness levels mean higher standardized test scores.
Physical education is preventive medicine at its best. When it comes to the obesity epidemic, the evidence is clear: PE is a medicine that works — both as a vaccine and as a treatment.
The American Heart Association recommends that elementary children receive 150 minutes a week of physical education and middle school students 225 minutes a week. The best available data for Oregon children shows that our composite average for elementary kids is 72 minutes a week; for middle school students it’s 155. Currently, even without the proposed cuts to PE, Portland children are already losing out. We now average 59 minutes for elementary and 105 for middle school students, 18 percent and 32 percent less, respectively, than the dismal statewide averages.
Eliminating or severely cutting PE will likely have a disproportionate health impact on students whose families can’t afford to pay for expensive after-school athletic programs. In a district with a high percentage of students in the free or reduced-price lunch program, it appears that the most disadvantaged students receive the least amount of PE.
As stewards of our children, Portland Public Schools needs to maintain the components of the school day that are proved to have a major positive effect on their current and future intellectual and physical well-being.
This is an issue of basic fairness, social justice, health and academic performance, now and in the future .
We must invest in our children’s lives and provide quality PE for all Oregon children.
Minot Cleveland is an attending physician in the emergency department at Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland and a founding member of Physical Education for All Kids Coalition. Mary Lou Hennrich is executive director of the Community Health Partnership: Oregon’s Public Health Institute.
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