Photo courtesy of MCPS

Nate Tinbite is the current student member of the MCPS board of education. Tinbite hopes to be able to give student athletes PE credit for participating in school-sponsored athletics.

Student Member of the Board of Education (SMOB) Nate Tinbite proposed a bill that would give students physical education credit for participating in a school-sponsored sports team. This bill has received lots of positive feedback from student athletes, but there is concern that not everyone will be included.

Montgomery County Public Schools requires all students to have one full credit of physical education in order to graduate. WJ has many options to fill in that credit, including specialty classes like yoga, dance, soccer, basketball, weight training and cross-training.

Student athletes often find themselves exhausted after a long day of school and practice. Additionally, having to take a PE class can be very redundant if they are already spending multiple hours after school practicing.

“Student athletes should be able to earn a PE credit for their hard work during the season,” Tinbite said via Instagram.

Freshman girls’ varsity soccer player Brooke Onder thinks that giving student athletes PE credit will be beneficial to their performance.

“We would be spending less time on physical education and conserving more energy and effort for our practices and games,” Onder said.

Athletes who are in activities not sponsored by the school would not be included in this bill. Junior Kaitlyn Brady is an acrobat outside of school and practices over 24 hours per week. She believes that it’s unfair to students like her who are not involved in sports at school, but still dedicate a lot of their time to athletics.

“If people are putting in a lot of hours outside of school, they should be getting credit, too,” Brady said.
Others believe that PE is a good way for students to take a break from their long day of academics and unwind, and that exercise may even help students in their classes.

“Taking PE class will benefit a student in their academic pursuits,” PE teacher Lorraine Goldstein said. “There is research showing the brain’s learning centers get turned on by exercise.”

The new bill will give students half of a PE credit for participating in school-sponsored athletics. This bill was a campaign promise made by Tinbite last year when he was running. MCPS Superintendent Jack Smith will review the proposal in hopes of implementation by February 2020.