Newsom streamlines gym waivers as 35% of children overweight or obese

(The Center Square) – California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill making it easier for public schools to get waivers to offer physical education for only half the year. While advocates say the change will allow students to take an additional two academic courses per year, with more than ⅓ of California children overweight or obese, others say schools aren’t letting children get enough exercise as it is.

Under California law, middle and high school students are required to participate in 400 minutes of PE for every 10 school days. AB 2073 allows schools to offer PE for only 18 weeks (one semester) if they offer twice as much PE during that time, which they have already been able to do for 40 years via waivers, by a vote of the school board. With one in three California schools already on some form of alternative schedule through these waivers, this bill makes it much easier for schools to adopt such schedules.

With most California students not meeting basic state standards in any subject, Los Angeles Unified School District says this new law, and the alternative schedules it supports, increases learning.

“The longer class periods allow for more in-depth learning in a single class period, and taking fewer classes at one time allows students to better focus on the coursework they are currently learning,” said LAUSD in support of the bill. “Additionally, block scheduling allows students to pursue up to eight courses each year, instead of the six or seven courses that are common on a five-day school week schedule.”

However, some education experts warn the legislation doesn’t help the current situation, in which many students don’t get enough exercise, while many that do are students who participate in non-school extracurricular sports and athletics they do not get PE credit for.

“A lot of [schools] simply don’t want to enforce a lot of outdoor exercise already,” said California Policy Center Vice President of Government Affairs Lance Christensen in an interview with The Center Square. “Kids that are athletes, a lot of their participation in those sports is often way more intense than the district’s policy on PE, and they don’t get to count as much, or very little of that. If they really want to deal with some of these challenges such as obesity … they might want to incentivize more of that kind of participation rather than waiving PE classes.”