Politics & Government

Gold Medal (and $10,000) Goes to Northmont PTA for Fitness Programs

But the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports could be on its last legs.

Kris Gedestad retired as a library technician at Northmont Elementary last Friday after 13 years at the northeast La Mesa school.

But the Fletcher Hills resident couldn’t stay away.

Wednesday morning, she was back at school, watching alongside her daughter and granddaughter as the school’s PTA received a check the size of a Boogie board from Kenny Rogers, executive director of the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.

The amount?  A cool $10,000.

“The kids had been talking about it,” Gedestad, 59, said after Principal Melody Belcher pointed her out to a crowd of 300 fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders seated cross-legged in the school auditorum.

“There was no way I was going to miss this,” said Gedestad, who told of peeking at the kids exercising from her nearby offices.

Gedestad and the assembled speakers—including schools Superintendent Brian Marshall, Mayor Art Madrid, PTA President Matt Wood and application writer Tony Lawrence—all knew about the check, however.

In fact, Wood received the gold medal that went with it at a Sacramento ceremony last month.

But it was still a thrill for the kids to see Mr. Lawrence get the medal draped over his head like an Olympian on Wednesday—after he put on a show of struggling at push-ups while killing time for the start of the 10:30 a.m. presentation.

Rogers had driven down from his Culver City headquarters, he said. Northmont was the first of six gold medals he was set to award on campuses in the various Spotlight Award categories.

But these medals may also be the last.

According to at least one press report, Gov. Jerry Brown is uncertain about whether to retain the council, which was established under his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Two weeks ago, the Bay Citizen news site reported: “Although it is called The Governor’s Council, and uses the state flag in its logo, the group is not part of the state government. The nonprofit organization was created during … Schwarzenegger’s administration, and the former bodybuilder championed it. But Brown’s administration may have different priorities.

The news site quoted Brown spokesman Evan Westrup as saying the council’s future is under review.

“The governor has said he was going to look at every board and commission and program under his purview, and the council is one of them,” Westrup told the Bay Citizen.

That shouldn’t take away from Northmont’s achievement, however. 

Here’s the essay that led the 10-member council, chaired by 1984 Olympic champion gymnast Peter Vidmar, to select Northmont as the top PTA in the state—out of 28 finalists and thousands of wanna-bes:

Northmont elementary PTA’s commitment to fitness is second to none!

Each day starts with a parent sponsored run-for-fun, where kids can earn Popsicle sticks for each lap, accumulate them, and trade them in for prizes each quarter. High earners are recognized in front of the whole school.

We held our first annual “family fitness fair,” over 100 people attended a hands-on, evening presentation of fitness and nutrition, that included flyers, demonstrations, organic and healthy food samples and fun! We followed up with an all school presentation the next week for all the students to reinforce everything they learned, and issue challenges to the kids for snack-skipping and exercise.

In the spring we had our 3rd annual fit camp. 6-8 weeks of 1 hour of fast-paced training and 20 minutes of nutrition talk once a week. Advanced concepts boiled down to digestible elementary school bites. It included homework, such as completing series’ of exercises (bonus points if parents joined in) bringing in wrappers of healthy snacks or nutrition guides from where they ate that week. They learned how to run faster, jump higher, plyometrics, body-weight exercises, and all about fat, carbs, proteins and calories. They learned how to know if they were working out hard enough, too hard or need to “kick it up a notch.”

We had a local personal trainer and a few other parents come weekly for structured PE, including proper warm up, stretching and fun fitness games like Simon says – fitness style, and freeze dance.

We had a PTA sponsored ballroom dance class that showed there are a lot of ways to exercise and all they need to do is find one that works for them! Plus we worked closely with the local little league, Pop Warner, Soccer, basketball and cheerleading organizations, sharing facilities, fields and resources.

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