San Juan Unified School District Students More Physically Fit Than Peers Statewide

The California Department of Education has released its annual report on the physical fitness of the state's students, and there was good news and not such good news for Fair Oaks.

The good news: Students in the San Juan Unified School District outperformed their peers statewide on fitness tests, with 49.2 percent of ninth-graders scoring a passing grade on all six physical fitness measures, compared with 39 percent of ninth-graders in California.

The bad news: A majority of kids throughout California, including those in San Juan Unified are failing the test. Only a third of all students tested in California performed in the state's 'healthy fitness zone' on all six measures. And just 31 percent of San Juan Unified fifth-graders and seventh-graders did. That leaves a lot of children who are out of shape, lack flexibility, or are simply inactive.

"Nothing is more important than the health of our children, and today's results show that many of them need a helping hand to get fit and stay in shape," state Superintendent Tom Torlakson said in announcing the test results.

The test measured students' aerobic capacity, body composition, flexibility, and trunk, abdominal and upper body strength.

Aerobic capacity, considered by the state the most important indicator of physical fitness, was measured at least in part by how fast a child could run a mile. About 69 percent of SJUSD ninth-graders and seventh-graders, and just 67 percent of SJUSD fifth-graders, earned healthy scores in that category. That's compared with less than two-thirds of students at each of those grade levels statewide.