To: Kathy Hoffman
Stand up for Teens
Kids currently are not challenged or encouraged to get up and move around. More specifically in Highschool, students are not given a Recess and there is no requirements to keep physical activity in their schedule semester to semester. They are given a lunch but there is no activities made available to students, only more seats for them to sit with friends and eat. The solution is increased budgeting for physical education, after school programs and accommodations available for students to be able to stand in class while participating in learning. In addition to more budgeting, make schools have available activities for lunch/recess. Like opening the Gym, allowing people to go on to the fields, even just providing games students can play in at lunch like ping pong and corn hole to get the students up and moving.
Why is this important?
There are many harms associated with sitting for prolong periods of times. Sitting for long periods of times have been associated with depression, child obesity, disruption to brain growth, physicals pain like back and legs and many other issues. In addition to the harms, in the 2021 Budgeting for state of Arizona there was ZERO funding added for Physical activities in school