Waiver Option Helps Many Florida Students Dodge P.E. Class

Feb. 2, 2010— -- With a note from their parents, tens of thousands of students are trading in their gym bags for trumpets, song sheets or books, according to data from the Florida Department of Education.

State law requires elementary and middle-school students to participate in physical education classes.

This is the first full school year the middle-school requirement is being enforced. But as part of the statute, Florida legislators also adopted an "opt-out clause," allowing parents to sign waivers instructing that their children be dismissed from the P.E. courses.

(Click here to see the statute.)

As a result, many Florida children are opting out of P.E., according to preliminary numbers provided by the Florida Department of Education. In some schools, 30 percent or more of elementary and middle-school students have opted out of the courses.

Because middle-school students are required to take only one semester of P.E., the numbers will not be final until the end of the school year, Florida Department of Education officials say.

But the preliminary numbers are still surprising to some advocates of the mandate.

State Sen. Lee Constantine, R-Altamonte Springs, who sponsored the physical education legislation, said a closer look at the numbers is needed.

While it's still too early to tell, Constantine said, he has asked the Department of Education for a statistical analysis of the data. It would worry him "if individual schools are using the waiver as a means to get around putting P.E. back in their schools," he said.

"We understood there would be a certain percentage ... we didn't really know what percentage that would be. ... But there would be a percentage that would opt out, have a waiver and that was intended that way. We never expected or hoped that schools would use it as a way to get around the entire concept of P.E. And if that 's the case, then we're going to have to do something about it."