A.G. Gancarski
In 2014, Holiday Hill Elementary on Jacksonville’s Southside began a tradition that carries through to this day: the Morning Mile.
Each morning during the school year, students, teachers, parents and administrators run or walk a mile … an important physical component, especially given that physical education is a once-a-week activity in school.
PTA mom Amy Mitchell helped get the program started. The aims were modest: to “help the kids focus better.”
She had heard about the Morning Mile from a friend downstate. And it’s a burgeoning trend, Mitchell said, involving hundreds of schools in Florida, throughout the rest of the country, and even internationally.
But the one at Holiday Hill was, said Mitchell, the first Morning Mile in Northeast Florida.
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As radio synthpop played, such as “Roar” by Katy Perry and other things one might hear at a Marco Rubio rally circa March 2016, the students had a special companion for one of their last Morning Miles of the school year: Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry.
Curry, noted for turning on the afterburners during his midday runs through Hemming Park in downtown, was maintaining pace with the young students as he worked through a foot injury.
After the run and an autograph session with dozens of excited school children (and future FloridaPolitics.com readers, no doubt), Curry talked to local media from FloridaPolitics.com and WJXT.
“The Morning Mile,” Curry said, is a “great program … consistent with Journey to One,” Curry’s initiative to improve public health outcomes in Jacksonville, which currently languish at 48th place among Florida’s 67 counties.
The idea, said Curry, is to just get some physical activity every day.
