Pierce County kids are idle — ‘sad, depressed, hopeless.’ New study shows where it’s worst
Tom Seigel knows he sounds cynical. He doesn’t care. He’s been doing this for more than two decades, and he’s no stranger to fighting for what he believes the students under his watch deserve.
When he was younger, Seigel spent 25 years in the military. He’s now been the superintendent of Bethel School District for nearly as long — 23 school years, to be exact. Whether it’s due to his upper-Midwest upbringing, his time in the U.S. Navy or his more recent career guiding a rural-but-ever-growing district with more than its share of challenges, he’s painfully blunt with his assessments these days.
When it comes to addressing the inequities and realities that families in Bethel face — from the lack of parks and sidewalks to the 56.3% of students identified as low-income, the 3.5% who qualify as homeless and the nearly 16% with disabilities, according to state data — Seigel is tired of talk, he told me.
A new report authored by the nonprofit Aspen Institute — commissioned by Metro Parks Tacoma and the Names Family Foundation — is a perfect example, he said.
Over the course of a year, the Aspen Institute, as part of its Project Play initiative, sought to assess physical activity among Pierce County youth and the availability of youth sports and other athletic opportunities countywide while also providing recommendations for how to address the gaps researchers found.
The report is expected to be publicly unveiled on Wednesday, Oct. 25. A copy was provided to The News Tribune in advance of its release this week.
The failings identified in the report are predictable, Seigel said after reviewing a copy of the report.
Still, he holds out hope that this time will be different.
Pierce County lags behind
The numbers are staggering.
Countywide, kids and families don’t have what they need to live happy, healthy lives, the Aspen Institute found.
While there’s work to be done in Tacoma, and alarming disparities across the county, in Bethel — and other rural areas where population growth has far exceeded the development of recreation facilities and services in recent years — it’s as bad as it gets, the data shows.
Across Pierce County, kids are less active than their peers across the state and nation, researchers found, most notably in the Parkland-Spanaway area and across the Narrows on the peninsula. The problem is even more distinct in girls and children with disabilities.
Only 19% of Pierce County youth engage in 60 minutes of physical activity a day, which is the minimum standard recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the study shows.
That’s well below the national average of 24% and the statewide average of 23%, researchers underscored.
Among Pierce County youth who reported having zero days of physical activity, 25% said they regularly feel depressed or hopeless — more than twice the rate found among kids who reported being active every day.
“I’m not surprised. It reinforces what I’ve been saying all along, and pretty vocally, that this area doesn’t have the resources that other areas of the county have,” said Seigel, who indicated he sees the impact every day at school, whether it manifests in student behavior issues and kids who act out or a lack of engagement and classroom participation.
“As a result, our kids suffer.”
Based on the lengthy findings included in the Aspen Institute report, Seigel has a point.
The lack of physical activity has major implications, contributing to a youth and young adult mental health crisis that threatened to overwhelm our local behavioral health safety net long before the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the problem across the county, the report makes clear.
The question, of course, is what to do about it?
To help provide an answer, the Aspen Institute includes more than sobering data, which is good, considering the stakes.
The report also provided a host of recommendations, largely based on interviews and advisory group discussions conducted over a 12-month period involving Pierce County kids, coaches and local officials.
Among the key takeaways, the report’s authors call for increasing the amount of free play kids get in school and crafting local athletic offerings around the things young people say they want.
The report also provides a firm basis for local officials to re-imagine how Pierce County parks and recreation facilities and programming are envisioned and developed in the future, according to Metro Parks Tacoma executive director Shon Sylvia and Roxanne Miles, who oversees Pierce County Parks and Recreation.
It’s a call to action, and some, like Miles and Sylvia, are optimistic about the future. Both are committed to addressing the root causes, even while being honest about the sizable challenges ahead, they told The News Tribune.
Simply put, the study shows that, when asked, Pierce County kids are interested in engaging in a host of physical activities — from snowboarding and horseback riding to archery. That’s a good thing.
The problem is simple, however: Historically, those aren’t the kinds of things local parks districts have put their resources toward creating and maintaining, Miles said. It’s usually ball fields and basketball hoops
“We have the fastest growing urban growth area. There are more people living in South Hill and Frederickson and Spanaway collectively than there are in Tacoma, and that really is putting a huge demand on us to keep pace,” said Miles, who has led Pierce County Parks and Recreation for the last six years.
“We are not where we need to be, but we have an amazing amount of partnerships and facilities planned for the next 15 years” to help address the problem, she added.
Mental health
While the national youth mental health crisis was thrust into the spotlight in the wake of COVID-19 school shutdowns, in reality, the problem has been brewing in Pierce County for much longer.
Nationally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a 2021 survey of high school students across the country found that 37% reported experiencing poor mental health during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, 44% reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless during the previous year, the CDC reported. In 2021, the U.S. surgeon general warned of a “devastating” mental health crisis among adolescents.
Closer to home, the effects are hard to miss, according to Pierce County healthcare leaders across the spectrum.
By the end of 2020, local hospital emergency rooms, including the emergency room at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in Tacoma, reported a massive surge in mental-health related visits, The News Tribune has previously reported. The spike elicited heightened concern for good reason.
Between 2017 and 2019 — before the coronavirus pandemic began — Mary Bridge had experienced a 400 percent increase in the number of children visiting the ER with a mental-health crisis, according to data previously provided to the newspaper.
Addressing the correlation between youth activity and mental health, the Aspen Institute report doesn’t pull any punches.
“Youth are struggling. After COVID-19 hit, 58% of 10th graders in Pierce County reported they feel sad or depressed on most days. Children of all ages also expressed to us concerning levels of anxiety and depression,” the study noted, drawing on data from Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.
“The Aspen Institute’s survey of Pierce County youth confirmed locally what we know nationally — increased physical activity translates to better mental health,” the report’s authors added. “Pierce County children who were physically active reported feeling more excited, happy and motivated, while children who were physically inactive said they feel more nervous, anxious, sad, depressed or hopeless.”
Ashley Mangum is the director of Kids’ Mental Health Pierce County, a local coalition of youth behavioral health providers launched in 2018 working to improve the area’s fractured and siloed mental health network.
Mangum told The News Tribune that the link between youth mental health and active children is indisputable.
“It definitely matters,” Magnum said. “We need a continuum of care that has support and resources for all of our kids.”
“When I think about the role that physical health and exercise all plays into the behavioral health continuum … there are so many benefits,” she added.
“Just the interpersonal skills that you get, learning how to cope with things and deal with stressors … or being able to achieve goals and have those positive interactions. It’s incredibly important.”
Free play
It’s a tension familiar to local parents.
With school districts across the county facing incredible challenges — and most attempting to serve an increasing number of children and families with insufficient and finite resources from the state — difficult decisions have been made.
Over the years, one staple of childhood has been slowly whittled away in many places: The amount of recess, or “free play,” kids receive at school.
Particularly in places where access to local parks is limited like Pierce County — where only 53% of youth have community park access and only 43% have neighborhood park access — local schools provide one of the few consistent opportunities kids have to be active, the Aspen Institute study shows.
Starting in the 2024 school year, a law signed by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee earlier this year will require state public schools to provide at least 30 minutes of recess every day. In much of Pierce County, it’s a minimum threshold many schools already meet. Kids in Bethel receive 40 minutes a day, according to district spokesperson Douglas Boyle, while Tacoma Public Schools students generally receive a similar amount of recess, in addition to extra time for breaks and movements between lessons built into the school day, according to information provided by the district.
According to the Aspen Institute report, simply acknowledging the role that physical activity plays in the growth and development of young people represents progress.
According to state Sen. Twina Nobles of Fircrest, who championed the 30-minute recess bill, the motivation for passing a law requiring at least 30 minutes a day of recess was straightforward. In response to what the existing body of research makes readily clear — the strong connection between kids who are active and metrics like academic achievement, childhood development and social emotional learning — mandating a bare minimum of time that elementary students in Washington spend engaged in free play was a no-brainer, she suggested.
“The recommended time for recess or free play for our youngest is 45 minutes a day,” Nobles said earlier this month, acknowledging that with many districts across the state falling short of that, passing a bill requiring only 30 minutes of recess time was more feasible.
“What we know about young people is that they learn by play,” Nobles added.
“Folks who are leaders in education know that time ... is critically important.”
The Aspen Institute study describes Nobles’ recess bill as a step in the right direction and one that further progress can be built on.
In fact, improvement is critical, the report suggests, considering that by middle school, only 39% of Pierce County kids reported playing sports. By high school, it drops to 27%, the report found.
“Physical activity helps build vital social skills and problem-solving abilities while improving concentration and stress management,” the study states.
“The Washington State School Directors Association is charged with creating a policy encouraging physical activity breaks for middle and high schools, where youth are less physically active.”
Little leagues and coaching
Among a long list of recommendations, one thing the Aspen Institute calls for is a concerted community effort to bring back small-time sports little leagues at the neighborhood level — the kind previous generations likely recall from their childhood.
The report also highlights the need to train and develop better youth coaches, so that when kids do play sports or participate in athletics, it’s an enriching experience regardless of skill level or college scholarship prospects — not something that shatters confidence and the desire to play.
Darren De Leon, the co-owner of Game Time athletic apparel in Tacoma and a local AAU basketball coach who works with kids from ages five to 17, has seen a similar need firsthand.
A former student-athlete who grew up on Tacoma’s Eastside, De Leon first got into coaching for the chance to mentor young people facing challenges and barriers to participation he experienced as a kid.
Today, De Leon works with roughly dozens of student athletes, providing guidance on the court and off, he said.
By necessity, part of his role involves helping kids from Tacoma pay for the cost of participating, De Leon explained, which can be hundreds of dollars a month including travel, equipment and related expenses.
While De Leon volunteers much of his time to helping young people chase their athletic dreams at the highest levels, he also acknowledged what’s been lost as hometown little leagues have been replaced by things like ultra-competitive year-round travel teams and seven-on-seven passing academies.
“For me, sports were an opportunity to have fun, and it gave me a safe haven from the things I was dealing with stuff on the outside,” De Leon said. “The landscape of sports has really changed versus when we grew up, and it can be tougher now, but making sure every kid has an opportunity to play is huge.”
Scott Heinze, the former president of the Tacoma School Board, knows the challenges facing local schools better than most, particularly as they attempt to respond to the aftershocks of COVID-19 and the disparities in childhood activity highlighted by the Aspen Institute study.
Heinze retired from the TPS board in 2020. More recently, he has worked as a consultant, including for Metro Parks Tacoma and the Aspen Institute.
Earlier this week, Heinze said he believes the approach Tacoma schools have taken in recent years provides a road map for other districts and communities.
Specifically, he said, the growth and development of the district’s Beyond the Bell and Club B programs, which is the result of a partnership with Metro Parks Tacoma to create expanded after-school programming and supplemental athletic opportunities for all school children, is a prime example.
“I think the challenge is that youth sports have become so specialized and competitive, and they are cost prohibitive for a lot of families. A lot of kids at that age don’t want to be limited to one sport, or they might be interested in trying a different sport, but there aren’t opportunities for sampling,” Heinze said.
“In Tacoma, we moved to a model several years ago with Beyond the Bell at the elementary school level, where we understood from talking with kids and families that a couple of the most significant barriers to participation were transportation and costs,” he added.
“For us to be able to program at every elementary school in the city and create school-based recreational programs instantly created better access, and I think it’s a model for others.”
Walking the talk
If we’re lucky, the Aspen Institute report and the findings it includes will help create much-needed momentum in Pierce County.
That’s the whole idea, even if the challenge is steep.
Back in Bethel, Seigel will wait to see what pans out, he told me last week, offering apologies in advance if he sounded cranky or jaded.
Promises have been made before, and the time for action is overdue, he explained with a hint of exhaustion.
From where he’s standing, it would be difficult for things to get any worse.
A new report is one thing. A deliberate, coordinated response is another, Seigel suggested.
“We’re a resource desert. This is my 23rd year doing this, and I haven’t seen any action yet,” he said on a recent Thursday afternoon.
“I’m not going to hold my breath,” Seigel added.
“Hopefully something will finally be done — this time.”
This story was originally published October 25, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
