New Physical-Education Bureaucracy Called a Weight on the Department

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The New York Sun

The city’s Department of Education has created a million-dollar bureaucracy in the past year to oversee and improve physical education in the public schools.


While the department says the new supervisors will usher in a revolution in urban physical education, some lawmakers, advocates, and union leaders say it would be more productive to send money to schools that can’t buy equipment or provide proper facilities.


In August 2003, the department brought in Lori Benson, a former teacher and fitness instructor, to be the captain of its physical-education team. Also in 2003,the department hired four regional physical-education directors covering areas in the four largest boroughs with high levels of adult obesity. This September, the department hired six more regional directors, completing the team.


“For so many years, physical education has been marginalized,” Ms. Benson said in a telephone interview last week. But with childhood obesity on the rise, she said, it’s important to change New Yorkers’ attitudes toward fitness.


The regional directors keep in touch with phys-ed teachers and assistant principals in the 100 or 150 schools in each of their geographic areas. They provide monthly professional development sessions, as well as technical support and mentoring. They also make sure the public schools’ newly adopted curriculum, Physical Best, is implemented, and they serve as advocates for individual schools’ initiatives. The group is also working on creating innovative programs, such as a new partnership between Bally’s Total Fitness and Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx.


“Prior to this administration, there wasn’t any dedicated person who was thinking about this all the time,” Ms. Benson said, explaining the importance of the new directors, who each earn $90,000 a year. Ms. Benson’s salary is $106,000.


Public officials, such as the public advocate and the chairwoman of the City Council Committee on Education, have urged the education department to improve physical education.


But some people are saying it would be folly if Department of Education officials thought a new layer of bureaucracy could solve the decades-old problem.


“They’re backing into a top-heavy management system again,” the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said. “A few months ago they added a science layer, and they added a special-education layer, and they added an intervention layer, and now they’re adding a physical education layer. … You can’t keep on saying you’ve cut the bureaucracy when in fact you’ve added to it.”


Ms. Weingarten said she never receives complaints from physical educators about a lack of professional development and oversight.


“The complaint we get about gym is that there are no resources, there are no facilities, and the classes are just too big and large,” she said. “And the kids, because there’s so much focus and attention on literacy and math these days, that they don’t get enough time to engage in physical education.”


The executive director of Advocates for Children, Jill Chaifetz, said her organization, a nonprofit group, usually receives such complaints as “the rain came through the roof and ruined the gym floor,” or “no one can use the playground because there aren’t enough adults to supervise,” or a simple “there are no balls, there’s no budget to actually get anything.”


But Ms. Chaifetz said it’s too soon to judge the new physical education regime. She suggested waiting two years before determining if the curriculum and the directors were improving phys-ed programs in the schools.


City Council Member Eva Moskowitz said it seems “intelligent” to change the way children are educated in fitness.


“I lived in fear of playing dodgeball,” the Manhattan Democrat recalled. “That was my gym experience, where these boys would try to throw this ball at you as hard as they possibly could. I think there’s some recognition that it should be about fitness and lifelong fitness as well as some skills, and it seems intelligent to me.”


But Ms. Moskowitz, the education committee chairwoman, said: “Education occurs or fails to occur in the school building. That’s where you need to drive the resources.”


And so far, she said, she hasn’t seen any evidence that the new gym bureaucrats are improving physical education at individual schools.


“They’re supposed to help with sort of back-office stuff and support,” she said. “I haven’t found that they come through for schools, so ultimately schools are left on their own. And if they’re left on their own, then they might as well just get the money, which clearly would help them.”


That, the new physical-education director for Region 9, Victor Ramsey, said, is not true. In his 12 years as a physical-education teacher, he said, he could have used a supervisor and mentor like himself.


“I got support at the school level, but I felt that the support from the Department of Education and the administration at the time wasn’t like it is now,” he said. “I felt a lot more could have been done. I’m glad I’m part of this movement.”


Mr. Ramsey, who is also studying at Columbia’s Teachers College for a doctorate in curriculum and teaching in physical education, said since he started work in September, he has been helping teachers infuse the new curriculum into their programs. Region 9 includes the Upper East Side and most of Manhattan below Central Park.


Mr. Ramsey also ran one of the 10 regional professional development sessions on Election Day.


“The teachers have the foundation, most of them, in fact a large majority of them,” he said. “It’s just a matter of just rekindling the skills and motivating and continuing to support them. We’re an extension of them at this level. We’re supporting all of the schools.”


The New York Sun

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