I applaude school board members for their thankless job. Every school board member always makes decisions based on what is best for children.

Another factor in the boards decision making process, they make their decisions on the information available to them.

Obvioulsy the South Dakota local and state school boards need to investigate the NEW BEST PRACTICE- in physical education. I do not know anything about the present PE program in South Dakota but obviously the administration does not respect the progrom enough since they are willing to cut back on PE.

If this was a reading program not respected, would the reading program be cut back or would the board seek out best practice to imporve the program back to respectablility.

South Dakota should read the book SPARK by Dr John Ratey of Harvard and also investigate the national PE mdel PE4life (www.pe4life.org) only then should the educational leaders go back and vote on extremely important decisions that will impact children the rest of their lives.

It has been proven, adding physical education time will not take away from academic performance but just the opposite, quality PE will improve academic performance.

Quality PE will improve the health of children (I assume the childhood obesity epedemic has hit South Dakota), it will improve academic performance especially in math and reading, the the final bonus, quality PE will improve the behvavior of children - the key is quality PE - how could any school board in the country vote to cut back on a program that will contribute so much to the quality of students lives?

Phil Lawler - PE4life Academy Director