New P.E. Program Coming to (California) City Schools, Funded by Federal Grant

New P.E. Program Coming to (California) City Schools,
Funded by Federal Grant
by Tracy Garcia, Staff Writer
Posted: 03/02/2011

WHITTIER(, CA) – An expanded physical education program, complete with new equipment for each school and teacher training, is coming to the Whittier City School District next fall, thanks to a nearly $400,000 federal grant.

The 6,600-student district was among 13 organizations in California to be awarded a Carol M. White Physical Education Program grant, which is designed to help schools expand or improve P.E. programs for K-12 students by including lessons in healthy eating habits, good nutrition and daily exercise.

“We are all required, as public schools, to provide 200 minutes of instruction in P.E. every two weeks – it’s a requirement of all teachers, and all students must receive that,” said Academic Officer Laurie Baccus.

“But the quality (of P.E.) varies, so what we are trying to do is improve the instruction that’s already happening,” she said.

As such, the PEP grant will go toward expanding the district’s Health, Education, Activity, Recreation and Training (HEART) project, which began a few years ago in the district’s after-school program.

Over the next three years, all schools will receive the evidence-based Coordinated Approach To Child Health (CATCH) curriculum, and all 240 teachers will be trained on how to implement the new lessons to promote exercise, healthy food choices and prevention of tobacco use.

CATCH is already being used at Jackson Elementary School, which has volunteers from Whittier College come to campus three times a week to conduct P.E. lessons as part of the citywide fitness campaign, “Activate Whittier.”

“Really, the idea is to support the teachers and give them a curriculum so it’s not just having the kids play foursquare or basketball,” Baccus said. “It’s more in-depth instruction not only in healthy habits, but in physical activity.”

There are three goals of the HEART project, officials said:

To increase the percentage of students who engage in 60 minutes of daily physical activity;
To increase the percentage of students who reach age-appropriate cardiovascular fitness levels; and
To increase the percentage of students who eat fruit two or more times a day, and vegetables three or more times a day.

The district has already begun taking students’ height, weight and body-mass index measurements in order to create baseline data that will be used to track students’ fitness progress over time – a requirement of the $393,979 PEP grant, Baccus said. The money will be spent on new pedometers, the CATCH curriculum and teacher training.

Individual measurements were being taken in every classroom Thursday at the nearly 500-student Hoover Elementary School near Uptown, where Principal Kathy Schmierer said the new program has “great potential to change kids’ lives.

“The students and teachers are so excited about getting to wear pedometers and monitor their levels of physical activity each day, then track them over time and compare the data,” Schmierer said.

“P.E. is an important part of our core curriculum, but it’s one of those things that takes more of a back seat in the crush of teaching reading and writing and math,” she said. “This brings P.E. and health back up to the forefront in a way that’s doable for teachers and students.”