403 Park Access, Schools and Child Obesity by State Assembly District
Image by The City Project
Levels of child obesity range from 23 to 39% in Los Angeles County, as shown in Map 403.
There are unfair school, park, and shape disparities in Los Angeles. Children of color living in poverty inexplicably lack access to parks, to school fields, to healthy food in grocery stores and restaurants, and to cars or transit to reach parks, schools, or healthy foods. They suffer from the highest levels of child obesity.
The shape implications of the lack of places to play in parks and schools are profound. In California, 73% of fifth, seventh, and ninth graders did not achieve minimum physical fitness standards in 2004. In LAUSD, 87% of students were not physically fit. Yet in 2006, 51% of school districts monitored in California, including LAUSD, did not enforce statutory physical education requirements. At LAUSD’s South Gate High School, 1,600 children took the state Fitnessgram test and not one passed. Forty schools did not have a single physically fit student. Less than 10% of students were physically fit in nearly one-third of the 605 schools in LAUSD. Only eight schools had student populations that are more than 50% physically fit.
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