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Mission Statement
RIAHPERD's mission is to promote and support creative and healthy lifestyles through high quality programs in health, physical education, recreation, and dance. We provide members with professional development opportunities that increase knowledge, improve skills, and encourage sound professional practices.
The mandatory time requirement for physical education/health in Rhode Island schools is a necessity for present and future student wellness.
Health and physical education are of vital importance to our school children. There is a critical link between the health-related behaviors youth choose to adopt today and the lives they lead in adulthood. Physical inactivity, tobacco, alcohol and other drug use, sexual behaviors, and unhealthy dietary habits place young people at a significantly increased risk for serious health problems, both now and in the future.
The case for health and physical education has never been more pressing. For countless reasons- bad diet, excessive time spent at computers and televisions, and even safety concerns about playing outdoors- children are more sedentary than ever. The U.S. Surgeon General, David Satcher, MD, Ph.D. is “alarmed by the steady trend …seen over the last two decades… As a nation, we are becoming increasingly more sedentary in our lifestyles… Fewer and fewer schools require students to take physical activity at school….” RI school children are mandated to receive only 100 minutes of combined physical education and health each week, far below the amount of time recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC and visit this CDC site too). They recommend daily physical activity and at least fifty hours of health education every school year.
The number of obese children ages 6-17 has doubled in the past 30 years. For the first time, Type 2 (adult onset) diabetes is being diagnosed in children and it now accounts for 1 of every 3 newly diagnosed juvenile diabetics. In a recent survey of more than 1000 parents nationwide, sponsored by The American Obesity Association, eighty percent of parents do not want physical education and health classes in their children’s schools reduced for academic classes. They want and expect schools to teach children healthy patterns of eating and exercise and to make healthy - lifestyle choices they can carry into adulthood.
On December 15, 2000 the U.S. Congress approved a mammoth-spending bill that included a four hundred million-dollar, five-year appropriation for the Physical Education for Progress Act (PEP). The PEP Act is now an authorized program of TitleX of the Elementary and Secondary Act. Under the PEP Program the Secretary of Education is authorized to award grants to local education agencies to initiate, expand, and improve physical education (PE) programs for K-12 students. Funds can be used to purchase equipment, develop curricula, hire and/or train PE staff, and support other initiatives designed to enable students to participate in PE activities. Rhode Island is also one of sixteen states funded by the CDC for coordinated school health programs. These funds provide our state with a wonderful opportunity to increase and improve health education programs.
In 1992, the Board of Regents and the Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education convened Rhode Island’s Common Core of Learning Team comprised of over 100 parents, educators and civic leaders. Together they formulated a questionnaire, polled over 200,000 Rhode Islanders and developed goals for education in our state in the 21st century. They included the ability to communicate effectively, to view learning as a lifetime process in which problem-solving skills are imperative, to acquire a body of knowledge that forms the base for the future of society, and to accept responsibility for one’s self, one’s learning, and one’s role in society. Well-planned and carefully taught health and physical education lessons are an ideal means of fostering the development of these goals in each of our children.
A few educators and state legislators in Rhode Island believe that the present time mandate, our children’s only guarantee that health and physical education will be a part of their complete education, should be reduced or eliminated. Students have the right to an education that includes the development of their physical selves. And we know too much about the dangers of smoking, physical inactivity, drug use, and unsafe sexual practices to ignore teaching our children about how to make alternate choices for healthy lives.
In view of the direction that our national government is taking to increase and improve physical education programs all over our country, we in Rhode Island want to remain a strong proponent of mandated physical education and health. Knowing that these programs are vital to the well being of our students, we cannot allow mandates for such programs to be put aside. Let our state instead invest in worthwhile programs that will not only improve the every day life of our children but also act as an investment in the health of an entire future generation.
Please give our children every opportunity to be thriving, healthy, productive adults. Eliminating the very programs that teach our children the knowledge and skills they need would only serve to increase the already staggering numbers of unhealthy, at-risk behaviors and contribute to the growing epidemic of preventable diseases. We know that children who are fit and healthy are able to learn better and perform better on assessments. The fact is, if we want our students to be fit for high achievement, we need more health and physical education, not less.
Executive Director
Rhode Island Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance