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Advice from the field: Building a Model PE Program in the nation’s largest urban school district

This is an excerpt from Organization and Administration of Physical Education 2nd Edition With HKPropel Access by Jayne D. Greenberg & Judy L. LoBianco.

By Lindsey Harr

Leadership in Action

Leading the Nation’s Largest Urban School District: Building a Model Program

Lindsey Harr

Executive director, (2011-2021), Hip Hop Public Health

Establishing rigorous PE for all students—especially in urban school districts—requires us to reach beyond pedagogical knowledge and fluency with research that eloquently makes the case for PE as an essential part of every child’s education. Education leaders need a nuanced understanding of the political realities that surround education locally and nationally so they can be nimble in positioning PE as a central part of the conversation. They must also seek partners in a variety of sectors to create diverse networks of stakeholders who can help to move the PE agenda forward. In New York City, this two-pronged approach, coupled with an uncompromising commitment to prioritize physical education instruction, enabled us to embark on an unprecedented initiative to revitalize PE in all of our 1,600 schools for each one of our 1.1 million students.

Central support for PE at the New York City Department of Education (DOE) largely disappeared following the city’s brush with bankruptcy in 1970s. When a small central team was reestablished in 2003, PE as a core instructional area was still far from being an educational or political priority. Too many students had inadequate physical education, if they had it at all. In the DOE’s Office of School Wellness Programs, which is partially funded through the city’s health department, our vision and mission was to establish PE as an essential element of the K-12 academic program, which is a given rather than an afterthought.

Our approach was to proactively align ourselves not only with the educational priorities of our agency in any given year but also with the city’s public health agenda, where growing concerns about childhood obesity led to expanded opportunities for collaboration, resource development, and messaging. In this endeavor, our success required that we stay well-informed and well-connected. We built relationships with a range of partners, from community-based organizations to national groups. We engaged those inside and outside of the DOE with whom we had complementary priorities, and we educated stakeholders who could amplify our message about systematically addressing barriers to PE and who could advocate in settings where we did not have access. Over time, growing and informed awareness about the importance of PE and the challenges to providing it for every student moved physical education into the political conversation; ultimately, it resulted in Mayor Bill de Blasio making an investment of $100 million in 2016 to bring New York City schools into compliance with state PE requirements over four years.

When the mayor asked us to “fix PE,” we knew what the main barriers were; so did our partners. We were able to quickly design a plan to establish PE as a core academic area due in part to the groundwork we laid helping our constituents understand the reality-based barriers to PE and due to our smaller-scale efforts to test effective solutions for those barriers.

PE Works combined a rigorous pedagogical approach with a strong customer service model that tackled very real and practical challenges that our schools face, including generations of educators who had never experienced the full potential of physical education. We partnered with DOE Human Resources and local colleges to build a pipeline for the 400+ new certified PE teachers being hired under PE Works. We expanded and reorganized our team to be responsive to the varying needs of teachers, principals, and district leaders, with Central Office staff who had a diverse mix of expertise.

For our PE teachers, we focused on improving instructional quality and developing them as teacher-leaders, with dedicated instructional coaches assigned to each school, new professional development, one-on-one coaching cycles, professional learning communities, and more. For our principals, we used on-site needs assessments to collaboratively create individualized, multi-year action plans, providing them with specific, customized assistance and resources to create the conditions for PE to thrive in their school. At the district level, we partnered with other divisions to make policy changes, solve problems, and build buy-in for the school-level transformations required. At all levels, this work benefited from an extensive network of partnerships with community-based and advocate organizations as well as our education and public health colleagues.

The PE Works initiative will be judged not by its success after 4 years, but by the state of PE in New York City 10 and 20 years from now. Did we shift the culture in schools and in the district so that PE is not an afterthought, but an essential component of every child’s education? Is there a thriving group of physical education leaders with a central role in their educational community as they help develop the next generation of leaders? Is every child in New York City receiving rigorous, high-quality physical education that enables them to live a healthy life? Sustaining the investment we have made in New York City will rely on the same strategies that have brought us to this point: keeping PE relevant and central to the conversation throughout whatever education, public health, and political shifts lie ahead and continuing to expand our network of partners and advocates in every sector who understand the value of PE and will never stop demanding it for our students.

Reprinted by permission from Lindsey Harr

More Excerpts From Organization and Administration of Physical Education 2nd Edition With HKPropel Access

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