At a time when state budget makers are warning about potential “deep cuts” to education and the need to “protect the classroom,” along comes HB 1128 – Funds for Healthful Living Coordinators, sponsored by Verla Insko (D – Orange). This bill would require an additional $14 million in tax dollars over the next two years to create more non-classroom bureaucratic busybodies.
The purpose of HB 1128 is to “provide one full-time healthful living coordinator in the central office of each local school administrative unit.” What would the newly invented position of “healthful living coordinator” entail? According to the bill’s language, “The healthful living coordinator shall design, support, implement, manage, and evaluate a district-wide coordinated school health program that will address childhood obesity prevention and other health related issues.”
In other words, each school district will have a central planner for your children’s diet and exercise regimen while at school. The bill further notes that the healthful living coordinator will “work collaboratively with the obesity prevention staff at the local health department.” Apparently, the “obesity prevention” bureaucrats aren’t preventing very much obesity, so of course the solution is to add more bureaucrats!
This bill is yet another classic case of government meddling in people’s personal lives – and forcing taxpayers to foot the bill. Perhaps the state could hire Richard Simmons to get school kids to Sweat to the Oldies and get on the Deal a Meal program? While children are dropping out of school at an alarming rate and basic reading skills are frighteningly low, our legislators are looking to hire personal trainers for school children. Why learn about our founding fathers when you can instead discuss Tony Little?
Moreover, passage of this bill will inevitably lead to regular weigh-ins at schools in order to measure the success of their “coordinated health programs.” Our children’s waistlines are none of the government’s business. But such personal intrusions are to be expected among politicians who think government should control medical care – their justification being “if government is going to pay for medical care, your exercise, eating behavior and weight is our business.”
Because it would spend millions to further increase the number of non-classroom bureaucrats and obtrusively meddle in personal lives, HB 1128 is this week’s bad bill of the week.
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