A proposed SCUSD policy would allow future high school students to replace five required physical education credits for each season of sports participation.
The program will impact the PE and athletics departments, leading a number of community members to share their opinions in local school board meetings. PE teacher Gene Kendall was one of many surprised by the new proposal.
“Teachers would be potentially losing their jobs. With it happening so swiftly, it was like a bomb going off,” Kendall said. “It’s like we were creating the policy that is the death sentence of our own jobs.”
PE teachers around the district asked the school board policy committee to reconsider the plan. School board trustee Andrew Ratermann recommended the district and teachers to work together more closely when creating future drafts of the proposal, hoping to ensure all needs are met.
“The board was concerned that we had not done enough outreach and we hadn’t really looked at all of the issues,” Ratermann said. “We asked them to do some outreach to teachers and to do some additional outreach to parents and students – we wanted to hear student voices as well – and then bring it back.”
Chief Academic and Innovation Officer Brad Stam said he is willing to communicate and compromise with the teachers in an effort to implement a policy that helps students experiment with extracurriculars.
“We didn’t want to pit athletics against PE,” Stam said. “The intention is generally to lower the barrier of entry to trying a sport, or how difficult it would be to manage everything at once.”
Since joining a sport would exempt students from a year of PE, sophomore Jonas Flynn shared his worries that some sports would become crowded with uninvested students.
“I think a lot of people will join sports just to get out of class. You’ll have a lot of random people who don’t really want to be there but do it anyway. It could be a problem in no cut sports,” Flynn said.
If the new policy encourages uninterested students to join athletic programs, Wilcox High School athletic director Paul Rosa believes there could be negative impacts on sports teams throughout the district.
“You’ll have kids who try out and take somebody else’s spot, but once they’ve finished their minimum requirement they just quit,” Rosa said. “They don’t play their junior or senior year. Now, they’re not helping the athletics program at all. They just did it to get some credits.”
Although some players enticed by the program could prematurely quit sports, sophomore Jose Flores believes it could have significant benefits for existing, dedicated athletes.
“Unfortunately, if you get injured, the PE teachers will have you make up missed credits. They don’t see you doing anything, so they take points off of you. That brings your grade down,” Flores said. “If doing a sport gives you those credits for PE, it would help a lot of kids that get injured doing a sport and then get their grades lowered.”
Sophomore Ira Sudhani also believes the program will help student athletes rest and improve their athletic performance.
“I do seventh period athletics. I think the problem is that if you do PE during seventh period, then you directly go and do sports,” Sudhani said. “It takes away from what you can do in sports. But if you choose not to participate because you have sports later, then what’s the point of doing PE?”
Freshman Mia Rojo, however, believes PE provides its own kind of rest throughout the school day.
“I think that if I hadn’t taken the PE classes, I probably would have felt like I missed out on the chance to relax, not worry about grades and just hang out with my friends,” Rojo said. “It gives you that opportunity to just breathe.”
Aside from giving students a mental break in the day, Rosa believes PE classes teach students curriculum that a sport does not replace.
“I would say it’s equivalent to this: if you were in a book club, that doesn’t mean you’re taking an English class,” Rosa said. “There are certain things that you learn in PE that you wouldn’t learn playing golf. If you just ran cross country, you wouldn’t ever play a sport with a ball or learn how to play with teammates.”
The current draft of the new program suggests that California’s requirements for PE could be compacted into one year, which students would take in ninth grade. Stam hopes this would ensure that students get a well-rounded physical education while increasing flexibility in their schedules.
“Maybe they’re taking a lot of rigorous classes and also participating in a sport. This might allow them to take one less class and have a slightly more manageable load,” Stam said. “For students who have to take EL (English Learner) classes, this would allow them to take an elective. Others have said they may want to take another academic class to try to improve their odds of getting into a selective college.”
PE teacher Michelle Bumbaca does not believe that an extra class period provided by the new program would be equally accessible for all students. She believes that the new policy exacerbates existing inequalities between different students.
“You can see the spectrum of those that are great athletes and those that are okay athletes,” Bumbaca said. “Most of the time, those great athletes participate in training outside of school. Whether it’s financial or parental support, they have the means to do it. That isn’t equitable for the other 90% of the students.”
Even if additional classes were accessible, Rojo worries the policy would make some students feel pressure to overexert themselves.
“I know there are people who would get burnt out and be tired. They’d have such a strain on their mental health if they did take another class because they would fill it with an honors (class), or some people fill it with an elective or APs,” Rojo said.
While a variety of factors are worth considering as the new policy is revised, Kendall hopes the community will not discount the importance PE classes hold for certain students.
“I needed that PE class. I needed it not just for the grade but because I was a kinetic learner. I need the ability to move around,” Kendall said. “If I didn’t have that, I don’t think I would have been as successful as I was socially amongst my peers, or as a human being.”