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WASHINGTON — Many Hawaii high school students say they aren’t going to gym class or playing on a sports team, something that could be leading to higher rates of obesity and health problems, found.

More than half of Hawaii high school students reported they did not attend gym class in an average week in 2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest . The study also found 45 percent of Hawaii high schoolers said they didn’t play on a sports team.

That puts Hawaii at odds with , which found most students — just over half — reported attending a gym class in an average week. Hawaii reported in that 96 percent of schools required at least some physical education in middle school and high school, but grade-by-grade gym requirements in Hawaii peter off as students get older.

Nearly 83 percent of Hawaii schools taught a required gym class in sixth grade — but by 12th grade, only 19 percent of schools had mandatory gym class. For middle schoolers and high schoolers, Hawaii recommends offering at least 200 minutes per week — or 40 minutes per school day — of physical activity. Hawaii officials told Civil Beat that 76 percent of schools reported having met that recommendation two years ago.

“All high schools in Hawaii are offering the required credit of PE in high school, and meeting the minimum number of instructional minutes per week,” said Hawaii Department of Health’s Ranjani Rajan in an email. “However, since students in high school [as stipulated by ] are only required to take 1 credit of PE in all four years of high school, they may be more likely to enroll in PE in 9th or 10th grade.”

Yet 58 percent of students said they did not typically go to gym class last year, according to — and more than half of the 4,329 students surveyed were in 9th and 10th grades — which suggests students aren’t taking advantage of gym classes even when they’re available. That’s up from 56 percent two years ago. A whopping 93 percent of those surveyed in Hawaii said they didn’t go to daily gym class.

So what are they doing instead?

One-third of Hawaii high schoolers reported watching TV for three or more hours per day on an average school day. At nearly half of Hawaii schools, students are allowed to skip gym for religious reasons. Just over a quarter of schools give students a pass if they’re enrolled in other courses, and 18 percent of schools excused students from gym if they had “other school activities.” But it’s not clear from the report how often such absences are permitted.

“In general, teachers believe in educating the whole child,” Hawaii State Teachers Association President Wil Okabe told Civil Beat. “We believe in well rounded opportunities to develop minds and bodies to help our children succeed.”

Okabe, a former high school football player whose teaching background is in PE, pointed to First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign as an example of national efforts to address high school obesity, and said that addressing the “quality, quantity and intensity of physical education” is necessary to maximize kids’ potential. The says it’s clear Hawaii students need better health education, more physical activities and healthier school environments.

About 13 percent of Hawaii students are obese, the CDC reports, making Hawaii’s high-school obesity rate the 13th highest in the country. Five other states — Iowa, Connecticut, New Mexico, North Carolina and South Carolina — also reported having a 13 percent obesity rate among high school students. Elsewhere in the Pacific, the problem is much worse. In American Samoa, for example, 39 percent of students are obese.

Hawaii has made significant strides in recent years when it comes to nutrition, Department of Education Food Services Director Glenna Owens says. In addition to efforts to incorporate locally grown foods — watercress and papaya, for example — all Hawaii schools now use whole wheat bread for at least 50 percent of pizza and hamburger buns, and added more brown rice and higher-nutrient greens to school menus. The Department of Education has also introduced edamame, and is trying to reduce the number of processed foods in cafeterias. Sodas have been banned from campus vending machines.

Still, only 18 percent of Hawaii schools reported limitations on serving sizes, whereas nearly half of schools nationwide reported taking steps toward portion control.

Owens says Hawaii meets or exceeds all of the federal guidelines on school menus — of course, some those guidelines may surprise you. Remember last year when Hawaii’s congresswomen voted in support of a wide-ranging bill that means pizza qualifies as a vegetable?

One of the concerns Owens faces is that keiki who don’t have access to healthy foods at home won’t make healthy choices at school, even if nutritious options are available. “It’s not appealing,” she said. “They want fast food.”

Changing those behaviors requires a long-term approach, one that begins in the classroom and is carried over to the cafeteria. But the CDC found that more than one-third of Hawaii schools lack health curriculum that meets national standards. According to the most recent CDC , only 31 percent of Hawaii schools had lead health education teachers with specialties in both health and physical education in 2010. Compare that with states like Virginia and Pennsylvania, which reported 88 percent and 86 percent of teachers with such specializations, respectively. (The median, natonally, hovered near 50 percent.)

Hawaii also had a lower percentage of certified health teachers than the national norm. In Hawaii, about three-quarters of schools reported that all staff teaching health topics were certified in health education. The national median was 86 percent.

Okabe acknowledges Hawaii needs to confront the serious obesity problem that faces the nation as a whole.

“Our children need high quality health and physical education programs to help students succeed,” Okabe said. “Meaningful programs also address our nation’s battle with the most sedentary and unhealthy generations in American history.”