The Battle of the Bulge at Schools
DREXEL HILL, Pa., Feb. 20, 2007 — -- In the nurse's office at Hillcrest Elementary School in this Philadelphia suburb, nurse Kim Glielmi spends much of her day dealing not with cuts and bruises, but pounds and inches. On the day we visited, the entire kindergarten class was lined up for its mandatory march to the scales.
Welcome to the front lines in the nation's struggle against childhood obesity, a battlefield littered with emotional land mines. Like six other states -- Arkansas, Illinois, Maine, New York, Tennessee and West Virginia -- Pennsylvania now requires grade schools to record the height and weight of each student, measurements that are calculated into a body mass index, or BMI.
Children scoring above the 85th percentile for their age and sex are considered to be at risk by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Children in the 90th percentile or above are deemed overweight. For example, a 5-year-old boy in kindergarten who stands 4 feet tall hits that upper range at about 57 pounds.
Nurse Kim, as everybody calls her, calculates the BMI and corresponding percentile for each student. By state mandate, that information is then sent home to parents in notices that have been dubbed "obesity report cards." According to the CDC, 16 percent of American schoolchildren are obese, a figure that has tripled in the last three decades.
But the BMI report cards are getting mixed reviews from some parents and politicians who fear such information can backfire and hurt a child's self-esteem. Arkansas, the first state to mandate that schools send home BMI scores, is now considering whether to repeal its law.
At Hillcrest Elementary School, nurse Kim is careful to measure and weigh each student privately. She goes out of her way to pass on compliments instead of judgments about weight, constantly saying things like, "good job, honey, you've grown so tall!"
She believes the BMI testing is a valuable indicator for schools and parents alike.
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