A Wisconsin congressman brings his "FIT Kids" message to a Madison elementary school. It's not in his district, but La Crosse Democrat Ron Kind thinks Lapham Elementary School's innovative phy ed program is a great example of what he'd like to see more of, in schools across the nation. "The key is to get our kids up and going again," Kind said at the school Thursday. "Many of them are too attached to the TV, or the X-Box or the computer, and their daily physical activity is what suffers the most. FITKids is a small part of the puzzle. Kids who are more physically fit . . . tend to perform better in school."
Accompanying Kind on his visit to the school, UW School of Medicine and Public Health Dr. Alexandra Adams . "My sense, from having seen many, many obese children in my practice, is that they are not getting enough physical activity, and the majority of them need to get it through school, through physical education, because a lot of these kids are not involved in after school activities," said Adams. "There's a huge sense of urgency that we need to address this now. We're already to starting to see people in their twenties and thirties getting coronary bypasses, getting diabetes."
Kind's FIT Kids Act — which has received a big boost from exercise guru Richard Simmons — would include phy ed in measures of school progress, something not currently part of No Child Left Behind.