AtMS 210, an overcrowded school in Ozone Park where 81 percent of the 2,070 students get free lunch, Principal Rosalyn Allman-Manning has gone outside the Department of Education to add to her phys-ed menu. She's one of four principals this year to pilot a partnership between the DOE and Row New York,  a not-for-profit that introduces disadvantaged girls to the thrilling-but-preppie sport of crew. (The other programs happened at the Young Women's Leadership School of Astoria, Queens, IS 73 and IS 61 in Maspeth. Row New York's own programming happens outside in warmer months.)

On the day I visited, Allman-Manning stood in the auditorium doorway with me as the girls finished calisthenics. She asked a girl what she liked about the sport. "I like that you have to use teamwork," said the girl, chugging off to the stage for her time trial.

This display testified to a new DOE policy that seeks to give kids lots of choice in seeking sports that speak to them. It includes ski passes and health-club vouchers. Critically, at the pilot stage it involves nonprofit partners who can deliver the salient lessons.

Nonprofit partners bring their own resources and fundraising capacity to the public schools—as well as exposure to unusual sports that may not be offered in ordinary PE classes. This is a shrewd investment, because it corrals outside capital to bring students benefits that nobody can calculate.<!--more-->

Sports are idiosyncratic rituals - and it's not worth scarce DOE dollars to buy specialized equipment everywhere.  Yet nobody can say conclusively that a given sport is not worth trying. Letting partners like Row New York bring their assets, in an athletic analogue to the arts-focused Studio in a School, the DOE can encourage more athleticism.

And that encourages more self-esteem. At the end of the MS 210 rowing season, the Row New York teacher introduced me- " he's going to write about you maybe!" - and the girls applauded at the idea that someone would tell their story. They high-fived me on the way out. Their exuberance captures sports' educational role. Training in a sport teaches kids to both intuit and analyze the ways that working in groups and mastering processes can lead to higher self-esteem and firmer commitment to others.  It gives kids more techniques, and more ballast, for expressing who they are.

And anything like that deserves outside help, because our school culture shortchanges self-expression.

A little later, I unlocked my bike on the corner of 101st Avenue and 93rd Street. School had just let out and a school safety cop lurched between two girls. "Go now!" she yelled. "That's enough hugging!"

If the system makes hugging shameful, the least it can do is make fitness attractive.