To Fight Kids’ Obesity, Texas Returns to Gym

Texas reinstated mandatory physical education in elementary schools Friday, seven years after it was phased out to allow more time for academics.

Elementary school students will have to take at least 135 minutes of gym every week under a rule approved, 13 to 2, by the Texas Board of Education to combat obesity in children.

“We have a childhood obesity problem in the state of Texas that needs to be addressed,” state Health Commissioner Eduardo Sanchez said. “One of the places where it might be appropriate for children to get their physical activity is in school. Get them little and it becomes a healthy habit.”

Physical education was phased out in Texas elementary schools in 1995, when the Legislature decided to put more emphasis on academic subjects.

Texas high school students are already required to take gym to graduate, and a small number of elementary schools elected to continue it. But a new state law put gym back in the elementary school curriculum and directed the board of education to come up with a plan to implement it.

“Physical education is going to make you learn better, retain what you learn and make better grades, be able to stay in school and be successful,” said board member Geraldine Miller.

Dissenting board member Alma Allen said the requirement will burden teachers and cut instruction time for academics.

“If he got his physical education, he could be healthy and dumb, and we don’t want that,” Allen said.

Twenty-five percent of U.S. schoolchildren do not attend any physical education class, said Anne Flannery, executive director of P.E.4Life, a nonprofit organization that promotes physical education for youngsters.