Eau Claire Leader-Telegram. May 25, 2023.
Editorial: Report underscores importance of extracurricular activities
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction released its 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey this week and it includes information that should give Wisconsin school districts pause when they consider cutting extracurricular activities.
Such activities can become targets when districts have tight budgets. That’s understandable to some degree. It’s easier to make the case for protecting spending that directly relates to the classroom than it is for activities that take place outside normal hours and involve far fewer students.
What that ignores, though, is the apparent protective effect on students’ mental health that extracurricular activities provide.
Many people look back on their high school years as one of the best times of their lives. What is often lost as years replace reality with rose-colored glasses is that it is also a phenomenally stressful time. High school is when children learn to become adults.
As we noted not long ago, the gulf between a 14- or 15-year-old freshman and an 18-year-old senior is immense. They experience rapid mental, physical and emotional changes. Their social worlds become much more complex. Yes, there are good times with lifelong friends. But there are also difficult days. How could there not be in such a rapidly evolving situation? And it shows. More than half of the students surveyed reported they were anxious about their lives.
Extracurricular activities, the report found, were clearly associated with helping students maintain a sense that they belong in school and that they have supportive teachers. Only 45% of the students said they belonged when they did not participate in extracurricular activities. That figure jumped to 69% for those who did.
Rates for anxiety, depression and those considering suicide were similarly lower for students who were in extracurriculars. Those involved in extracurricular activities were less than half as likely to attempt suicide as those who were not.
That’s important because there are some concerning trends involving students’ mental health. The percentage of students considering suicide fell for two decades, but has begun to climb again. The report says 27% of students seriously considered a suicide attempt in 1993. That was down to 13% in 2013.
Since then, the figures have climbed again. Surveys in 2017 and 2019 found 16% of students reported serious consideration of suicide. The figure rose again in 2021, to 18%. That should be an immediate concern for parents and educators.
Interestingly, one of the things many adults think of as an essential step in growing up seems to exacerbate mental health challenges for students. Those who work more than 10 hours per week had higher rates for both anxiety and depression.
There is good news from the report, too. Alcohol consumption is generally down. Slightly more than a quarter of students in the newest survey reported having consumed alcohol in the past 30 days. The figure was 54% in 2001.
The percentage of students reporting abuse of over-the-counter medications is falling, though abuse of prescription painkillers is largely unchanged. And the 10.2% of students who said they were offered drugs at school was “at its lowest recorded level.”
When we editorialized earlier this week about mental health issues, we praised efforts to raise awareness. This report should act in the same vein, albeit with a sharply different focus. It should remind adults who make the decisions about funding and activities that providing them accomplishes more than creating well-rounded teens. It can make a profound difference in students’ lives in both the short and long terms.
Being a teenager is hard enough. If we think back, we can all remember difficult times from our own high school years. We can also remember what helped. Having extracurricular outlets provides an effective and important safety net for many students, and we hope those in positions of authority remember it.
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Kenosha News. May 28, 2023.
Editorial: Sidestep school ban on chocolate milk
When we read this month the U.S. Department of Agriculture was proposing a ban on chocolate and strawberry milk in the nation’s elementary and middle school cafeterias, we thought we were in for a food fight.
Sure enough, no sooner had the proposal gone out when it was lambasted as an “over-reach” by the Biden administration and an intrusion on the rights of parents to determine what is best for their children.
The goal of the USDA proposal, of course, is to fight childhood obesity, and yes, that is a concern. The Center for Disease Control estimates that 14.7 million youngsters in the U.S. between the ages of 2 and 19 are obese.
Some of that, experts say, lay at the feet of sugar consumption and that’s why the USDA put a bulls-eye on chocolate milk consumption in schools – since the flavored milks, strawberry included, have significantly more sugar than 1% low-fat white milk.
In fact, a cup of low-fat chocolate milk has 25 grams of sugar – and that is right up there with the 26 grams contained in a cup of Coca-Cola, experts say.
But we wondered if a total ban on chocolate milk would mean students would decline a transition to white milk – and that has happened according to past studies.
And what happens then to the beneficial nutrients found in milk. A cup of chocolate milk has 280 milligrams of calcium, 21 percent of the recommended daily intake. It is the main source of calcium intake which is essential for bone growth. It’s also high in vitamin D, potassium and other essential nutrients.
By banning chocolate milk is the USDA throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
To get some perspective on this debate, we contacted Stacey Tapp, Chief of Communication and Community Engagement for the Racine Unified School District and asked what were the consumption records at our schools and what the district’s position was on the ban.
Tapp told us, “During lunch service in RUSD, we offer 1% and fat –free white milk along with fat-free chocolate milk. We find that approximately 80% of the students take chocolate milk with their lunch.”
She said strawberry milk was offered randomly in prior years as a treat, but dairies have not been producing it in 8 oz. cartons since the pandemic.
“Flavored milk is popular among students, so our concern would be that by eliminating the flavored milk option, we may experience a reduction in milk consumption. We’d like to see a requirement to reduce the sugar content in flavored milk,” Tapp said.
That seems to us like a sensible compromise.
And, in fact, more than a month ago, the International Dairy Foods Association, announced an initiative to cut added sugars in flavored milk by the 2025-26 school year. The IDFA said it could reduce added sugars in chocolate and other flavored milk to up to 10 grams per 8-oz. serving and that 37 milk producers – representing more than 90% of the school milk volume in the U.S. have volunteered for the initiative.
While the USDA chocolate milk ban got the headlines, that IDFA proposal would appear – hopefully – to meet USDA goals.
We have often argued here for compromises in order to avoid politically polarized actions. There appears here a good chance that the goal of reduced sugar in chocolate milk could be attained without a total ban and we would urge milk producers and the USDA to work toward that goal.
The ultimate test, of course, will be if grade school students and middle school students are receptive to a sugared-down chocolate milk. It might take some getting used to.
