School Board, Superintendent Ask Gov. to Veto Bill Mandating More Phys Ed

School board chair Kathy Smith (Sully District) and Supervisor Jack Dale wrote to Governor McDonnell this week, asking him to veto a bill that would mandate 150 minutes of physical education per week in all elementary and middle schools by 2014. 

The bill, SB966, recently the General Assembly, but does not provide funding for school districts to implement the changes. Its purpose is to fight childhood obesity, a major health concern nationwide. 

The bill was supported by a number of influential health groups, including the American Heart Association, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Smith and Dale, writing on behalf of the school board, said that the bill's requirements would cause major financial problems for the school system. Middle schools already have more than 150 minutes of instruction, but the minimum for elementary schools is 60 minutes per week. 

"Mandating a specific amount of time for physical education, particularly given the many other mandates and accountability requirements...will force school divisions into a very difficult choice," Smith and Dale wrote in their letter.

"To implement the new requirement, school divisions can either incur a very large unfunded local expense to hire new physical education teachers or extend the school day to preserve currently available instructional time or they can reduce instruction time that is currently dedicated to core academic subjects, non-PE resource classes (art, music, foreign language, science, social studies). Preliminary FCPS estimates for staffing alone are between $18 and $24 million."

Dale and Smith also pointed to logistical difficulties in implementing the law. 

"Greatly increasing the amount of time required for physical education will place a burden on school facilities, particularly on very limited elementary school gymnasium space. Schools were not built with this mandate in mind, and it would be very difficult for schools to adjust capital facilities to accommodate the additional physical space requirement."