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House votes to eliminate BMI Tuesday, Jan 30, 2007 By Rob Moritz and Doug Thompson Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - The House voted Monday to repeal the state-mandated measurement of students' body mass. The Legislature adopted the nation's first such program in 2003 as part of former Gov. Mike Huckabee's Healthy Arkansas initiative to curb obesity in children, but the sponsor of House Bill 1173 called the measure a drain on school resources and a source for stigmatizing overweight students. The bill passed on a 71-26 vote and goes to the Senate, where members on Monday passed, 35-0, a $500,000 appropriation to replenish the governor's emergency fund through the end of the fiscal year. Huckabee depleted the fund in his final weeks in office on largely non-emergency measures, including spending $13,000 to wipe clean and crush hard drives from administration computers. The Senate also passed a bill encouraging stores that use grocery carts to provide free sanitary wipes for customers to clean off the handles. House Bill 1040 by Rep. Fred Allen, D-Little Rock, passed 29-2, and goes back to the House for concurrence in a Senate amendment. Rep. Keven Anderson, R-Rogers, told House colleagues he filed HB 1173 in response to "overwhelming feedback" over the past four years from opponents of the body mass index requirement. Anderson said parents told him that some students who received reports that they were overweight often were stigmatized. The Legislature later changed reporting requirements to try and keep individual results private. He also described the requirement, included in Act 1220 of 2003, as an "unfunded state mandate" which he said drains school districts of time and money to conduct but does not contribute to the student's academic performance. The measurements are done by school nurses. Anderson said he supported the law, which led to guidelines prohibiting schools from rewarding students with food, requiring schools to offer healthier lunches and stock vending machines with low-fat and low-sugar snacks and drinks. "It basically takes the excess sugar off the menu at schools" and "got soda pop out of our elementary schools and I supported that," he said. However, Anderson noted a fiscal impact study presented to lawmakers that showed it costs school districts at least $175,000 annually to do determine the body mass index of students and report information to parents he said they already should know. "We're not providing a great deal of revelation to parents when we send this report home," he said. "Ultimately, the parents have to be expected to take a certain amount of responsibility. The schools can't take all of that." Rep. Betty Pickett, D-Conway, said the BMI measurement was no difference than many other screenings done at schools. "We do vision screening, we do hearing screening, so why not do BMI screening?" Pickett asked. "The real drain on Arkansas' resources will be the money the state spends in the future to treat the diseases of obesity." A study released last week by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences showed 68 percent of parents said they were comfortable receiving the BMI reports on their children. Sixty-four percent said they were aware of the confidentiality safeguards and were not concerned about classmates learning of their child's BMI results. Eighty-five percent of the students surveyed said they were comfortable with the BMI measurement and reporting. The report found that the number of students teased because of their BMI result dropped from 9 percent in 2005 to 6 percent in 2006. Also Monday, the House approved Senate Bill 151, which appropriates $121,000 to the state treasurer's office to pay off a contract for a computer system purchased last year by Treasurer Martha Shoffner's predecessor. The bill passed 93-0. Payment for the data processing system was due Dec. 15, and the company has been charging 5 percent interest daily since then, the Joint Budget Committee was told last week. In the Senate, restoring the governor's emergency fund to the full $500,000 was approved. House Bill 1200 by Joint Budget Committee makes the supplemental appropriation and goes to the governor after a 35-0. Huckabee had depleted the entire account balance before leaving office. The Senate also passed a bill encouraging grocery stores to provide free sanitary wipes for cleaning off the handles of grocery carts. House Bill 1040 Rep. Fred Allen, D-Little Rock, passed 29-2. |
