Rebecca Moss: What Ever Happened to Gym Class?

Elaine Gil is the only gym teacher at PS 24, a large and growing dual language elementary school in the heart of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The 50 year old bounds from class to class in her sweatpants, sneakers and t-shirt, teaching 40 minute periods for kindergarten through fifth graders, one after the other. Yet, of the 750 students at the school, only about 450 are able to take physical education in a given year because of limited space and money, and those who do, have gym class only once a week. The loss of gym time in city schools is not new, but it's become ever more urgent. Slightly more than half of the children in PS 24 have been found to be overweight or obese. "My main goal is to get them moving," Gil said as 23 third graders filed into the second floor gymnasium for their weekly gym period. Gil is a self taught phys ed teacher, using her early childhood education training combined with the internet and common sense. "Most kids, if they have PE, have lost weight." Two decades ago, 42 percent of public school children attended daily physical education classes. Today, like PS 24, gym has been reduced to once a week in many city schools. Nationally, only 4 percent of elementary schools, 8 percent of middle schools, and 2 percent of high schools in the US provided daily physical education or its equivalent for all students in all grades, according to a 2006 report from the Centers of Disease Control. "We try to have incentives and programs that support physical education or its equivalent for all students in all grades, according to a 2006 report from the Centers of Disease Control." "We try to have incentives and programs that support physical education and healthy eating," said PS 24 Principal Christina Fuentes, but creating more gym classes is physically impossible.