News-Leader.com | True Ozarks | Texas considers adding obesity to kids’ report cards:
Austin, Texas — Texas school districts would be required to include the body mass index of students as part of their regular report cards under a bill introduced Tuesday by a lawmaker seeking to link healthy minds with healthy bodies.
When the measurement, which calculates body fat based on height and weight, indicates a student is overweight, the school would provide parents with information about links between increased body fat and health problems, said Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte.
More than a third of school-age children in Texas are overweight or obese, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture.
Eric Allen, a spokesman for the Association for Texas Professional Educators, said most parents don’t need to be told their child is overweight.
‘It doesn’t have a place on a report card,’ he said.
This bit of in loco parentis worry about childhood obesity brought to you by a legislature too afraid to ban soda, junk food, and candy vending machines, or fast-food-equivalent school lunches, or Coca-Cola / Sprite advertising on their basketball backboards or football stadium scoreboards from their school districts. Much easier to lecture the parents and embarrass the kids on their corpulent fatitude than to turn down revenue from junk food peddlers. Why, if they did that, the government might be forced to — gasp! — prioritize funding for the schools or — double-gasp! — raise taxes to adequately fund the schools or — perish the thought! — require mandatory phys. ed. classes at all grade levels.
