AISD Students Are Ready to Move with the Mayor
By Office of Communication
Posted on May 16, 2012, May 16, 2012

So the bar's been set for Kadon Morton. And what a high bar it is.

The Odeal Pearcy Elementary fifth grader plans to take six million steps over the summer which, if he can pull it off, would be about one million more than classmate Katie Clark, the winner in last year's Let's Move with the Mayor program.

"If she did five million,"said a confident Kadon, who spends his summers as a centerfielder for the Mansfield River Cats baseball team, "I'll have to do six million."

It's a lofty goal, but one Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck sees as doable and certainly admirable.

"I'd like to see all of them strive for something like that,"he said Wednesday during the Let's Move with the Mayor Kick-off Rally at Pearcy Elementary. "This is all about being active, about getting up off the couch and not watching television and doing video games all summer. Mostly, it's about establishing an exercise routine you can do into adulthood."

This is the third year for the Let's Move with the Mayor campaign, which equips over 4,000 AISD fifth graders with pedometers and tracking logs to record every step they take, from the time they put on their shoes to start their day to the time they pull them off and plop into bed. Among the goodies for the top three winners are Six Flags tickets.

Let's Move With the Mayor is part of a national movement that hopes to combat childhood obesity by building healthy habits. It grew out of First Lady Michelle Obama asking every mayor in America to join her Let's Move campaign for a more holistic approach to staying fit.

Mayor Cluck was joined in the Pearcy cafeteria by Texas Rangers mascot Rangers Captain and AISD Superintendent Jerry McCullough, who vowed to wear a pedometer and compare his steps with the fifth graders at summer's end.

"I'm going to wear it even when I have a suit on,"he told the students, adding, "You don't have to be in your P.E. clothes to go out and walk. It's a good idea to get your parents involved, too. They should be walking."

McCullough said he was inspired to walk more after joining Pearcy students in a warm up exercise and "found myself huffing and puffing,"he said.

Cluck did fine in keeping up with the students, teachers and P.E. teacher Greg Marburger, as did Clark.

She addressed the students about how she managed to come up with so many steps, telling them she succeeded because "I played in soccer tournaments and went to the park and just hung out with my friends and didn't sit around watching TV all summer. If I can do this, so can you."

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