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Schools

Ponderosa Elementary School Seeks Physical Education Grant

This South San Francisco school is looking for a $45K boost to its student health programs.

Pondersosa Elementary School needs your vote. No, the South City school isn’t running for reelection, but it has 10 more days to collect enough votes to advance in a national competition for a $45,000 grant to improve physical education.

The annual Healthy School Makeover Contest won’t just hand over the sum of cash to the winner, but channels it through specific plans to help schools address physical needs of their students.

“The neat thing about this contest is that they have everything that any school would need for a makevover,” said local parent Michelle Collins, who helped organize the effort. “It has curriculum, training on nutrition and exercise, and they’ll give you equipment that goes with the specialized PE curriculum.”

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Ponderosa is competing against almost 200 other schools. The top 10 contestants with the most votes after Nov. 14 will advance to the final stage, when official judges the applications to determine a winner.

Collins said that when physical education instruction was cut from the curriculum at Ponderosa 3 years ago due to lack of funding, she and other parents began working with teachers to lead PE activities themselves.

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“It’s also going to help [kids] in their academic performance,” Collins said. “The fact that they have recess and lunch doesn’t guarantee that they’re going to be active.”

The parents began with getting first graders outside to exercise, and this year is the first that all grades will participate in the parent-led program, which has been dubbed “rotating centers.” The effort now has about 30 parent volunteers and one or two classes per week at Ponderosa.

“The kids look forward to it,” Collins said. “They’ll see parents there [at the school] and say, ‘are we having rotating centers today?’ It would be good if we could have more equipment, more training and curriculum. The grand prize would take us to the next level.”

Anyone can vote once per day until the voting period closes Wednesday, Nov. 14. To see the application video and cast a vote, click here.

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