NEISD awarded $111,000 grant

North East ISD was recently awarded $111,000 from the City of San Antonio Metropolitan Health District to fund the repair of four tracks located at Nimitz Middle School, Krueger Middle School, White Middle School and Jackson Middle School. Through a Shared Use Agreement, these school tracks will be made available to the community during non-school use for increasing physical activity. This grant award is part of the city’s Communities Putting Prevention to Work project, funded from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The track repair at each campus will include removing up to 1-1/2 inches of the surface material, regrading the surface, adding up to 1-1/2 inches of new track surface material, and installing metal signs to indicate public use availability. NEISD expects to complete the project no later than March 18, 2012.

NEISD chose to focus on middle school campuses as the beneficiaries of the City’s award due to alarming statistics about the lack of physical activity and rate of obesity among secondary students (grades 6-12). The 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) reported that 16.4 percent of children ages 10–17 are obese, with 18.2 percent being overweight. A similar trend is seen locally.

Fewer NEISD middle school students reached the healthy fitness zone on the Body Mass Index (BMI) indicator of Fitnessgram in 2010-2011 compared with the district average for the same year. Close to 69 percent of middle school males reached a healthy zone BMI compared with the districtwide average of nearly 71 percent. In other words, 31 percent of middle school males were not within a healthy BMI range. However, middle school females matched the district average for a healthy zone BMI at 79 percent, with 21 percent not within a healthy BMI range.

“Knowing that not every child is interested in competitive sports, NEISD is striving to give every student a way to be active based on his/her interests and abilities,” said Rachel Naylor, Director of P.E., Health and Athletics. “The district focuses on promoting physical activities that students can enjoy over a lifetime, and we believe that improvements to the school walking tracks along with community outreach will positively impact our students and their families.”

Posted on January 20, 2012