Impact of a year‐round school calendar on children's BMI and fitness: Final outcomes from a natural experiment

BACKGROUND: Structure may mitigate children's accelerated summer BMI gain and cardiorespiratory-fitness (CRF) loss. OBJECTIVES: Examine BMI and CRF change during school and summer for year-round and traditional calendar school children. METHODS: Three schools (N = 2279, 1 year-round) participated in this natural experiment. Children's BMI z-score (zBMI) and CRF (PACER laps) were measured from 2017 to 2019 each May/August. Mixed effects regression estimated monthly zBMI and CRF change during school/summer. Secondary analyses examined differences by weight status and race. Spline regression models estimated zBMI and CRF growth from kindergarten-sixth grade. RESULTS: Compared to traditional school, children attending a year-round school gained more zBMI (difference = 0.015; 95CI = 0.002, 0.028) during school, and less zBMI (difference = -0.029; 95CI = -0.041, -0.018), and more CRF (difference = 0.834; 95CI = 0.575, 1.093) monthly during summer. Differences by weight status and race were observed during summer and school. Growth models demonstrated that the magnitude of overall zBMI and CRF change from kindergarten-sixth grade was similar for year-round or traditional school children. CONCLUSIONS: Contrary to traditional school children zBMI increased during the traditional 9-month school calendar and zBMI decreased during the traditional summer vacation for year-round school children. Structured summer programming may mitigate accelerated summer BMI gain and CRF loss especially for overweight or obese, and/or Black children.