Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in this country, yet few schools are fighting back. Here are three that are producing leaner, healthier, happier kids Midway through her daily 45-minute run with her fifth-grade class at Meridian Elementary School in El Cajon, Calif., 10-year-old Cheyenne Lafever leaves her friend Bianca to join her teacher.

His name is Pete Saccone, a vigorous, sun-cured man--all bone and muscle. Saccone has been conducting his landmark "Funner to be a Runner" program in suburban San Diego since 1980. He always runs with his students.

"Cheyanne," he asks, "could you please tell Mr. Brant how you felt about running at first?"

Cheyanne grins shyly, shortening her long, elastic stride to match my middle-aged shuffle. "Well, those first few weeks were really hard," she admits. "I wanted to quit. But Mr. Saccone promised that if I just kept trying, the running would get easier. He was right. Now," she concludes, her smile widening, "I love it."

Cheyanne runs back to Bianca, and we continue trotting around the packeddirt field behind this working-class community school. The children flow past us, moving fluidly and eagerly, many of them chatting with their friends. On the one hand, a child freely moving looks so natural that she barely arouses notice. But for all their grace and ease, Cheyanne and the 32 other children in Saccone's class form an anomalous sight-a glaringly rare exception to the dismal rule that most American kids don't run much. Or walk much, or bike much, or climb trees much, or play tag much any more. And that Meridian Elementary should provide its children such an abundant,pleasurable opportunity is almost as rare as snow falling on the nearby Southern California beaches.

To a potentially catastrophic degree, our kids have stopped moving. One quarter of Americans under age 19 are overweight. Worse, approximately 5.3 million kids, or 12 percent of all youths aged 6 to 17, are seriously overweight. What's more, the percentage of overweight young people has more than doubled in the past 30 years, with most of the increase coming since the late '70s. Coronary artery disease, already the nation's number-one killer, will likely skyrocket over the coming decades. As will diabetes, high blood pressure, and other serious "lifestyle" diseases that are associated with being overweight. The bitter fruit of today's inactivity will almost certainly come to harvest.

"This is an epidemic in the U.S., the likes of which we have not had before in chronic disease," warns William Dietz, director of nutrition at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Bruce Leonard, a veteran fitness advocate recently retired from the CDC, states the case even more bluntly: "In a few decades, we're going to learn that for the first time in American history, our children lived shorter and less healthful lives than their parents."

The roots of this crisis are profuse, involving many of our nation's most intractable political, educational, and socioeconomic difficulties. But the cure, it seems, lies squarely in front of me in Pete Saccone's fifth-grade class at Meridian. As visitors to the Funner to be a Runner program invariably point out, its essence is simplicity itself: kids from every kind of background moving happily, vigorously, and consistently under the direction of a good teacher. One foot in front of the other.

Saccone's program has thrived for 20 years, reliant on no major, or even minor, outlay of funds. it doesn't seek to justify itself with reams of data, or require the validation of school boards or state or federal agencies. It doesn't even have a Web site. But the program vividly illustrates some core attributes that it shares with other successful school-based fitness programs-attributes that can be easily followed by virtually any school in America.

First and most obviously, Funner to be a Runner takes place at a public school. "In many communities, public schools are the sole unifying force," observes CDC health educator Charlene Bergerson. "We can encourage a child to be physically active at home or out in the community, but we can't require it the way we can at school, It's become yet another responsibility for our educators, but a necessary one." It's a responsibility that Saccone, a public-school teacher for more than30 years, assumes with relish. When the 8 o'clock bell rings, his kids run at a steady, relaxed, conversational pace around the field's perimeter (The students may walk if they prefer. But after the first few weeks of school, no child chooses to walk.)

Second, Saccone's kids love to run. "If a child doesn't enjoy an activity, she's not going to continue it, period," says Russell Pate, Ph.D., a professor at the University of South Carolina and a leading expert on physical activity for young people. Generations of American children were turned away from running, he says, by teachers andcoaches who used it as a punishment.

Saccone's kids learn the opposite. "On the rare occasion when a kid's messing around, I'll correct him by taking away his running privileges," Saccone says. "And when I let the kids run for an hour instead of 45 minutes, they regard it as a reward. Four or five kids come to school a half-hour early every day so they can get in extra miles."

Saccone's students verify his claims. "I like how running makes me feel," Cheyanne says. "I like the sun and wind in my face, and 1 like running with my friends. I've run 650 miles so far this year. Our whole class has covered 20,000 miles. That's more than three-quarters of the way around the world," she points out proudly.

Third, running forms a central strand in Saccone's core curriculum. He uses running as the springboard for the day's rigorous academic work. After their 45-minute run, the kids go to the classroom, clean up, and write for 20 minutes, often on topics that surfaced on the run. They then compute the distance they ran that morning, on individual charts.

Plotting the class's accrued mileage on maps builds geography and social studies skills. Studying the physiological effects of running forms the basis for science lessons. By drinking lots of water and eating nutritious snacks--which follow naturally after a run-the kids team the fundamentals of a healthful diet.

It's that simple: Children at Meridian Elementary School in suburban San Diego love to run. Saccone finds that the time his students invest in running pays handsome dividends in increased energy, attention, and sense of well-being. Year after year, Saccone's students score higher than their peers on standardized tests, earn better grades, and demonstrate fewer behavioral problems. By connecting so closely to academic achievement, Funner to be a Runner demolishes the argument most often used to cut physical education programs: That in an era of shrinking school budgets and back-to-basics fervor, PE represents an expendable frill.

Fourth, Saccone runs with his kids, providing a crucial adult role model. The Funner to be a Runner program reflects the educator's own passion for the sport. A Connecticut native who began running to increase his energy as a young teacher, Saccone has finished more than 100 marathons, with a PR of 2:46. Before running 45 minutes each morning with his class, he always logs his own workout. "How can I expect my kids to run if I'm not willing to be out there working with them?" Saccone asks.

Fifth, Funner to be a Runner entails significant family involvement. Parents consent (and quite often request) for their children to be in Saccone's class and pledge to support their kids' running by providing adequate shoes, clothing, nutrition, and rest. The kids, in turn, encourage their parents and siblings to exercise with them. After 20 years, the program has become a wellknown and respected institution in the community. Kandace Guevara, for example, is the second member of her family to have Mr. Saccone for fifth grade.

"And I hope he'll still be teachingwhen our youngest daughter reaches fifth grade," says Brenda Guevara. "Over last winter vacation, Kandace asked her father if he would go running with her: She had never asked anything like that before."

Sixth, Saccone's program works; it makes kids leaner, healthier, and happier. In 1985, 5 years after the program's inception, a San Diego-area physiologist conducted a year-long study of Saccone's class, comparing it with a control group of non-running fifth graders. Results showed Saccone's kids had significantly better measurements of blood pressure, max VO2, body fat, and resting heart rate. Even more important, although far more difficult to measure objectively,his kids learned positive attitudes toward fitness that may last a lifetime. Funner to be a Runner might work with a gifted, dedicated ("benignly obsessed" might be a more accurate term) teacher such as Pete Saccone, but how about a school with a more typical faculty, promoting activities that range beyond running? How about a region less climatically favored than San Diego? Consider the case of the Robert Shaw Traditional Theme School in De Kalb County, Ga. Shaw serves students from pre-K through sixth grade in Scottdale, a small community on the southeast border of Atlanta. At Scottdale's core lie a shuttered textile mill and a yellow-brick housing project. Shaw'sstudent body is 98 percent African-American. Seventytwo percent of its students qualify for the federal free-lunch program. Shaw is a back-to-basics school of choice for De Kalb county residents. With small class sizes, a strong academic orientation, mandatory parental involvement, and a recently renovated building, Shaw is now a jewel of the Atlanta region's educational system. But among all the revolutionary changes, no program is more popularor successful than the one now under way in Deborah McKenna's third-grade classroom.

"Okay, children!" McKenna calls, switching off the overhead projector. "Tune for Take 10!" The 22 students snap shut their reading books and eagerly stand beside their desks. McKenna strokes her chin and squints, letting the suspense build, while the kids squirm and giggle. "Invisible jump rope!" the teacher decides. "To the times-5 tables!"

Then, with McKenna leading, the kids start jumping up and down, twirling their arms at their sides in a simulated jump-rope motion. As they jump, they recite their multiplication facts. "...6 times 5 is 30!...7 times 5 is 35!..." After the invisible jump-rope session, the children jog, dance, and march in place while continuing with their times tables. They keep exercising for 10 minutes. They will repeat these 10-minute movement-and-academics sessions two or more times during the school day, until they have logged at least 30 minutes of exercise, the minimum standard for children set by the CDC.

Designed and distributed by the Atlanta-based International Life Sciences Institute, the Take 10! program layers short, structured, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity breaks throughout the school day. By reinforcing core objectives in academic areas such as math, language arts, and Spanish, the program integrates movement into the school's existing schedule.

"Our goal is to reduce the amount of sedentary behavior in school and make sure every kid gets 30 minutes of exercise a day " says Bill Diggs, Shaw's principal. "The kids, teachers, and families all love Take 10! And to get kids up and moving, to get the oxygen pumping through their systems, without sacrificing any instructional time-that's a principal's dream."

In its school-wide team approach, its variety of physical activities, and its emphasis on short bursts of less-vigorous exercise, Take 10! differs sharply in style from Funner to be a Runner, but in substance they are very much akin. Both programs are public-school based, both are fun, both are embedded in everyday academics, both rely on teachers as role models, both entail family and community involvement,and both have been proven to work.

They promote both short-term fitness and long-term commitment to physical activity and a healthful diet. "When my daughter gets home from school, all she talks about is the Take 10! program," says Sharon Sutton, the mother of a second-grader and Shaw's PTA president. "She wants to exercise to earn her stickers. And she gets more points, and more stickers, if she exercises with her family. So last year, I started walking with her. I kept walking on my own. Now I walk at least three times a week, and I've lost 30 pounds."

The gloomy statistics measuring juvenile inactivity turn even more dire as children grow older. Sixty-nine percent of youngsters aged 12 to 13 exercise vigorously, compared with just 38 percent of those aged 18 to 21. Seventy-three percent of ninth-graders, but only 58 percent of 12th-graders, are vigorously active on a regular basis. In 1997, 43 percent of ninth-graders but only 19 percent of 12th-graders attended a daily PE class.

Such numbers raise difficult questions. Are teenagers naturally more sluggish than younger kids, for instance, or do they exercise less because they have fewer opportunities and role models? Don Zehrung, a PE instructor at Conestoga Middle School in Beaverton, Oreg., believes it's the latter. He contends that the appetite of older kids for physical activity is institutionally discouraged. "During my entire 25-year career in education, all I've heard is 'back to basics,' " he says. "What those words really mean is, 'Let's cut funding for gym class.' " "Secondary PE programs get cut because too many of them are lousy," Professor Russell Pate asserts. "Middle school and high school PE teachers simply haven't been as effective as their elementary school counterparts in providing fun, well-planned fitness activities that encourage kids-all kids-to become active, and stay active for a lifetime." In other words, PE for the nation's high-school class of 2000 was about the same as it was for my class of 1969: tedious, often humiliating, and oriented toward the jocks rather than the kids most in need of basic exercise. Which, of course, is most kids. "So a vicious circle ensues," explains Pate. "Kids are disappointed and frustrated. They complain to their parents about PE being a waste of time, which reinforces parents' memories of their own horrible high school gym-class experiences. When those parents go to the schoolboard meeting to decide which classes should get cut because of shrinking budgets, which ones do you think they pick?"

If their kids had Debra Harris for PE, those parents would face a much more difficult choice at the school-board meeting. "Okay, we'll stretch, and then we'll walk," Harris tells her class of 30 10thgraders at West Linn HighSchool in suburban Portland, Oreg. It's 7 a.m. and the sky is just starting to gray with dawn. The class meets early so the students, all involved inband or chorus, can fit electives into their schedule. West Linn demands 3years of daily PE for graduation, a far more stringent requirement than in most U.S. high schools. "And a lot of our seniors take a fourth year of PE as an elective," adds Harris, a former National PE Teacher of the Year. "PE at West Linn makes kids feel better." Kate Abramson, a 16-year-old sophomore, agrees. "During the course of a day, too many of us don't get nearly the exercise we need," she says. "In Ms. Harris's class we always get a good workout. We learn about eating right and how our bodies operate. We get to try all kinds of sports and activities. One of them will click, even for kids who don't like exercise." When the students finish stretching, Harris shows them how to measure their resting heart rates. Then they head out into the Oregon drizzle for a 20-minute power walk around an adjacent park. Afterward, for the rest of the 75 minute period, the kids move on to games and skills in the gym. All traces of early-morning doldrums have dissipated, as cheeks flush and happy shouts echo off the walls.

"We're in this for the long haul, for a lifetime," Harris says. "A PE teacher won't know whether she really reached a kid until 20 years after he graduates. Is that adult physically active? Is he reading the labels on food containers? If the answersa re yes, you know you did your job."

At the end of their morning run, during which each child in Saccone's class has covered between 3 and 5 miles, the kids can't resist showing off a little. "I'm going to test for the mile," Saccone tells me. "We do this every month or so, and it's the only time Iever put a watch on them. I don't record the results; it's strictly for their own information. And there's no pressure. If a kid doesn't feel up to going hard, he doesn't have to." After 10 minutes of stretching and calisthenics, the kids assemble at the starting line. Saccone says "Go!" and they take off on the first of three laps around the dirt field. After the first lap the field strings out, and for each passing child, Saccone has a personal, encouraging word.

"Five to 10 years ago, I used to take the kids to a lot of road races on the weekends," he recalls during the third lap. "I don't do that much anymore. Competition seems less important." He falls silent for a moment. "In a way, it's not even the running. These kids sense the transformative power of regular exercise. I believe it makes them better people." Suddenly the lead pack of two boys and one girl has flashed across the finish in just over 7 minutes. The kids pause briefly to catch their breath. Then, to my amazement, they jog off in the direction they came from. The three jog purposefully back past their oncoming classmates. They continue running until they reach a heavy, blond-haired boy moving at an honorable 11-minute-per-mile pace, the last child out on the course. Without making a fuss, the three kids turn to run with him. Together, moving easily, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the four children come running across the finish line.

Calling All Kids! if you'd like to get your children more involved in running, check out RuNNER's WORLD's brand-new Web site at www.kidsrunning.com. (Or, better yet, have your kids check it out.) It features all sorts of fun and motivational stuff such as kids' essays and poetry, games and photos, training tips, and highlights from successful kids' fitness programs nationwide.

Parents: Here's What You Can Do

Here are five ways you can help your kids become physically fit: 1. On the Internet, checkout RUNNER'S WORLD's new site (www.kidsrunning.com), or www.pecentral.org, an excellent resource.
Also, check out publications such as the Road Runners Club of America's 65-page manual, Children's Running; A Guide for Teachers and Coaches (www.rrca.org) and Active Youth: Ideas for Implementing CDC Physical Activity Promotion Guidelines, published by Human Kinetics, which provides dozens of inspiring examples of successful school programs.

2. At your child's school, insist that PE instruction must strive toward one central goal: to promote enjoyable, lifelong physical activity for each child.

3. Let teachers know that PE is important to you and your child. Ask how your child's classroom teacher incorporates PE into the daily curriculum.

4. Volunteer to help during PE indtruction. Volunteers stimulate teachers and boost morale. Your presence during PE reinforces its importance to the kids.

5. Keep running. The children of runners are likely to become runners themselves.