For Chicago Public Schools, gym class finishes last

State requires physical education, district advises it, but schools aren't doing it
By Monica Eng
Tribune reporter
September 8, 2009

On paper, Chicago Public Schools' gym program sounds great.

The district boasts one of the country's strictest wellness policies, recommending 155 minutes to 225 minutes of physical education per week for elementary school students. And it's located in Illinois, one of only two states to require daily gym for students.

The problem is the district doesn't follow those rules. Several elementary schools surveyed by the Tribune reported offering gym class once a week, and a district spokeswoman said that was typical.

A lack of physical education may not seem urgent compared with other challenges Chicago schools face, from gang violence to a 50 percent dropout rate. But obesity experts say structured daily exercise is crucial for the city's schoolchildren, many of whom are at unusually high risk for weight-related health problems.

Federal data show Illinois suffers from the fourth highest level of childhood obesity in the nation, and other research has found children in Chicago are heavier than their counterparts in the rest of the state.

To put Chicago's physical education program in some context, the Tribune called four diverse districts in the area and found that Evanston-Skokie, Naperville, River Forest and Joliet all offered gym more often than Chicago.

The state can grant waivers to districts who argue they cannot provide daily gym, but officials said Chicago Public Schools has never applied for or received such a waiver for its elementary schools.

In e-mailed comments, district spokeswoman Monique Bond said the district faces a nearly "half-billion-dollar deficit this year and cannot afford to add additional programs that contain large new cost drivers without finding substantial new cost savings elsewhere."

Bond also said "scheduling PE five days a week would cut into instructional time, a priority that we must also carefully balance."

Supporters of physical education say that, far from impeding academic instruction, exercise makes students more receptive to learning. Many point to the work of Harvard Medical School clinical psychology professor John J. Ratey, who found physical exercise has direct neurological and intellectual benefits.

"A fast-paced workout boosts the production of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor. I call it Miracle-Gro for the brain," Ratey wrote in his book "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain." "The end result is a brain that's better able to perform."

Responding to the district's economic objections, the Illinois Heart Association's Beth Mahar said that supporting physical education for Chicago students now would pay high dividends later.

"The money it takes to provide a child with daily PE now doesn't even come close to the money it will cost the nation or that child in terms of the chronic diseases they are looking at in the future," said Mahar, a former gym teacher on the heart association's advocacy committee. "If they don't establish healthy habits early on, the ballgame is over. And we are never going to catch up with that child."

Linda Wallace taught gym at Prescott Elementary School in Lincoln Park for more than six years but was laid off last spring when the position was reduced to half time.

She said she finds this sad personally and professionally, "but mostly I feel bad for the kids because they're the ones who really suffer."

The gym teacher said that last year she calculated the body mass index of students and found "a high percentage of kids who were overweight and even one 7th grader who qualified as morbidly obese."

"It's terrible," she said. "And the exercise they got at school was pretty much it, because they didn't do it at home. I know this because I was there for more than six years."

Julie Carter, a gym teacher at Carson Elementary School in Chicago, saw firsthand how districts can differ when she moved to the Chicago district after teaching in Wheaton and Berwyn, where she said students had gym much more often. "Also in the suburbs my students could play safely outside when they got home, a lot of their parents could afford to sign them up for after-school sports programs and they got recess every day," said Carter, president-elect of the Illinois Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance's Chicago chapter.

Activists have been lobbying for more Chicago schools to offer recess; those who don't cite time, staffing and safety.

Holden Elementary School gym teacher Kathleen Cantone recalls that when she was a child in Chicago schools decades ago, "we walked to and from school every day and we walked home and back for lunch every day. Things are very different now."

Some suburban districts that offer more physical education than Chicago can do so in part because they have more resources, facilities and equipment.

But Joliet District 86, which also serves many low-income children, has found a way to incorporate exercise into the classroom, which doesn't require gyms or new teachers. The district requires teachers to conduct fitness exercises in class three days a week in addition to students' twice weekly gym classes.

"Our teachers know that in order for children to function well in a classroom they need physical activity periodically to perk them up and get them going again," said Carol Sossong, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

Advocates of physical education stress that today's "new gym" (actually about 20 years old) is much different from the humiliating dodge-ball games of yesteryear. Activities are offered in "a cooperative environment where students of all abilities experience success so they can enjoy being active through adulthood," Carter said.

According to the Illinois State Board of Education, about 30 percent of Illinois districts have received waivers that allow them to opt out of daily gym. But others, including Chicago and northwest suburban District U-46, have not applied for the waiver for their elementary schools despite failing to meet the mandate, according to the state board. Both did obtain waivers for high school students who meet certain requirements.

David Thomas, an exercise science professor at Illinois State University, looked at the issue in 2001 and found that a third of the districts followed the gym mandate, a third had obtained a waiver and "one-third operated as if they had the waiver when they didn't."

Critics say the waiver program, even when followed, makes it too easy for districts to neglect student fitness. Last year, the program was tightened to limit schools' use of the waivers to a maximum of six years -- and each waiver must now be applied for in two-year increments, with up to two extensions.

Still, there are few consequences for violating the rules. The state board said it has never sanctioned a district for non-compliance with the physical education law. And although the creation of wellness policies is federally mandated, actual implementation is not.

"There is no carrot and stick here," said Jamie Chriqui, senior research scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Institute for Health Research and Policy.

Chriqui was the lead author on a study of wellness policy implementation that found even those districts that follow the letter of the law "aren't necessarily following the spirit of the law because these policies lack teeth."

Funded by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, the study was released in July to coincide with this fall's reauthorization of the federal Child Nutrition Act, which mandated the wellness policies in 2004. Chriqui is urging Congress to strengthen the law with national physical education standards, more specific language and a system for monitoring progress.

Bond said the Chicago district is "quite concerned about meeting ... compliance" with state physical education laws and is creating a task force to look at these issues.

As a veteran of Chicago schools, Cantone said she would like to see daily gym but acknowledges the issue is complex. "There are serious scheduling issues that would have to be considered, and we'd need to hire more gym teachers," she said. "It's a lot more complicated than people think. ... But if CPS really decided this was a priority, it would happen."

meng@tribune.com
Chicago Tribune