Bill Seeks to Lighten Kids’ Load

To avoid creating a generation of hunchbacks, California legislators are weighing a bill that is intended to make textbooks lighter and reduce schoolchildren’s backpack burden.

Whether algebra books should be reduced from five pounds to three and American history to a slimmer two, the bill’s backers don’t say. They would leave those details to the State Board of Education.

But some poundage reduction in texts is badly needed for children dwarfed by their giant backpacks and afflicted with aching shoulders and tingling fingers, according to Assemblyman Rod Pacheco (R-Riverside), one of the bill’s sponsors.

Because many schools either don’t have lockers or ban their use because of security fears, lighter tomes are the solution, insists Pacheco, who has seen three of his own children buckle under their backpack loads.

But any Weight Watchers regimen for books faces opposition from publishers and skepticism from some parents and school administrators. They argue that heavy backpacks--like any weight problem--do not have a single solution, especially one as potentially complicated and expensive as changing textbooks.

“It doesn’t make a ton of sense,” says Greg Vallone, principal of Monroe High School in North Hills. “I’ve been under the impression that textbooks weigh what they weigh because someone who understands curriculum has determined how much must be in them. How would you change that?”

Easily, countered Pacheco. “One simple way is to take the textbook you have now and split it in two,” he said, with one for the first semester and the other for the second part of the year. The weight regulations, he said, would not “affect content or substance at all.” And paperback books would help too, he said.

Last year, Pacheco sponsored a bill that would have required school districts to study the link between excessive backpack weight and injuries. That bill was vetoed by Gov. Gray Davis, who said there was not enough documentation to support the idea and that the issue could be addressed locally.

This year, Pacheco, along with state Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) and Assemblyman Dario Frommer (D-Los Feliz), is trying again. Armed with statistics from the Consumer Product Safety Commission that say thousands of children each year land in emergency rooms because of injuries from heavy backpacks, they want the State Board of Education to set maximum weight standards for textbooks by January 2004.

The bill, backed by the California Medical Assn., is currently on the Senate floor and, if it passes there, will go back to the Assembly for concurrence. The governor has not yet taken a position, said spokesman Russ Lopez.

A similar bill is being debated in the New Jersey Legislature. Its sponsor, Democratic Assemblyman Peter Barnes, said he wants to alert parents to the terrible dangers of heavy backpacks.

“When I was in the Army many years ago, we carried everything on our backs and some of these kids carry backpacks that appear to be heavier,” Barnes said.

But some argue that much of the backpack bloat comes not from heavy tomes, but from children’s own appetite for gadgets, CD players and cool clothes.

“The first line of defense is honestly to go through your child’s backpack and see what’s in there because there are a lot of items unrelated to school,” said Susan Truax, the mother of two middle school students in El Segundo.

Maureen DiMarco, senior vice president for textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin, makes a similar argument.

“The idea that regulating any one particular item in the backpack will reduce what youngsters put in there is verging on silly,” she said. “Ask any parent of a teenager.”

“We are against curvature of the spine,” she added. But publishers say the concern should be the overall weight of backpacks, not textbooks in particular.

And reducing the textbooks’ poundage would not be cheap, she said. Large books might have to be broken into two or three smaller volumes, which publishers estimate would add 25% to the cost.

But backpack manufacturers and retailers say that textbook publishers should bear some of the blame. Dale Jeffery, president of the backpack maker SeeThru Backpacks Co. of Stafford, Texas, says manufacturers have had to add special pads, straps and, in some cases, air pockets to help students with their loads.

Backpacks on rollers are wildly popular. Twenty percent of SeeThru’s sales are backpacks on rollers--up from 5% three years ago.

“Textbook makers want to sell more textbooks, so they put more pictures and stuff that may not add to the educational value but add to the weight of the book,” Jeffery said. “Lighter textbooks certainly would make the situation better.”

Brett McFadden, legislative advocate for the Assn. of California School Administrators, agreed that heavy backpacks are a “legitimate public health, public policy issue” but cautioned that spending more money on books may not be the best use of scarce money.

“We think by placing the weight standard into legislation, you are putting the cart before the horse,” he said.

Lilly Martinez, parent of an eighth-grader at Carr Intermediate School in Santa Ana, believes lighter texts are a good idea. “It’s crazy to be making them break their backs, carrying all that heavy stuff back and forth,” she said.

Didier Catzin, a parent of a student at Robert E. Byrd Middle School in Sun Valley, said his seventh-grade daughter Samantha’s blue Jansport backpack engulfs her tiny frame, and she has complained of neck pain.

“The real problem is they don’t have lockers,” he said.

Because of many such complaints, administrators at Byrd last year purchased double sets of social studies and language arts books so children would have fewer to lug around.

But kids say they still tote a heavy load.

“Sometimes, it feels like carrying rocks,” said seventh-grader Robert Rader. He said he was not sure a smaller textbook “could carry all the information it needs.” But he added, “It will be better for our backs.”

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Times staff writer Claire Luna contributed to this report.