Daily physical activity is one of the most pivotal parts of enjoying a healthy life. But with a globe-spanning array of video games continuing to entertain youth on the couch, round-the-clock television, movies and the Internet, many kids aren’t quite getting the exercise that they need.

It is recommended by the United States President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports that “children and teens need 60 minutes of activity a day for their health.”

Even so, Poulsbo Junior High physical education teacher Karla DeVries said the right amount of physical activity is even higher.

“Ideally, I would say at least 14-20 hours (per week),” she said when asked how active kids need to be to maintain a healthy lifestyle. “Realistically and minimally, at least seven hours (per week).”

At home, many children are free to make their own choices of whether to be active or sedentary, but at school, state mandates require that students participate in a certain amount of activity in PE classes and at recess.

In accordance with the state Legislature, last summer, the North Kitsap School board passed a new nutrition and wellness policy which sets guidelines for what its students are eating as well as what type of exercise they are getting. The policy can be viewed online at www.nksd.wednet.edu under the school board policies section.

“We’re going to ensure that whatever the Washington Legislature adopts for minimum curriculum, our students are getting that minimum amount of physical fitness available to them,” said NKSD director of food and nutrition services Dan Blazer. “What their grade level is will depend on what curriculum is available to them.”

According to the new NKSD policy, students in first through eighth grade are required to complete an average of 100 instructional minutes of physical education per week, while high school students must complete two credits of health and fitness during their four years.

“I think we have to let the school district know that this is a class that absolutely every single child should be taking,” said Kingston Junior High PE teacher Karen Byrd. “It’s just like math, everybody has got to take it.”

Currently at KJH, seventh graders are the only students taking PE year-round and they rotate the class with their health class every other day. Due to budget restraints eighth and ninth graders attend PE on a semester basis, Byrd said. At PJH, all students take the class on a semester basis, DeVries added.

“We only have the room for half the kids at once during a semester,” DeVries said of PJH. “When we have as many kids as we do, the gyms are packed.”

Still during the semester that junior high students are in PE, they are introduced to a variety sports and workout routines while they are also tested physically for two of the five days of the week on conditioning or fitness days.

“They work on their cardiovascular conditioning and strength,” Byrd said. “Each conditioning day, they will be doing a different thing so they realize that, ‘I don’t have to be in PE to do this.’”

Participation rates at North Kitsap’s junior highs are something that both departments are proud of, however, nationwide statistics have shown that physical activity tends to decrease as students age.

According to the Center for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance in 2005, just 36 percent of students reported participating in at least an hour per day of physical activity in five of the past seven days, while only 33 percent reported that they attended PE daily.

“If (students) only have (PE) for a semester they have physical activity every day in PE and for most of our kids, then they go home and they don’t do anything else,” Byrd said. “So, for the other half of the year they are not getting any physical activity at all.”

However, for any physical activity completed outside of class — including pickup sports games, walking, jogging, skating or dancing, to name a few — KJH PE staff gives students extra credit. Though students may not feel like they are doing work, physical activity doesn’t have to be absolutely strenuous to be beneficial.

“Being active is a way of life,” Byrd said. “It’s not that you have to be the best at any certain activity, just get your body moving.”