About 100 fifth graders sat on the basketball courts of Sierra Vista Elementary School on Monday morning, eagerly waiting for physical education teachers to finish giving instructions so they could start playing.
The day’s lesson of learning how to throw, catch and remove the opponent’s flag in football, was not atypical of an elementary school class — but now there was more equipment to go around.
“I think it’s much better because we have new stuff. We could do new things with it. We have new footballs, so it’s better because the old ones used to be flat,” said 10-year-old Irene Giron.
The new equipment was just a portion of more than 500 pieces bought for Madera Unified campuses with $8,000 donated by the Madera County Public Health Department. That money came to the department through a $1 million Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) grant that Kaiser Permanente invested in Madera in 2011...