Washington Heights takes the cake for the city’s plumpest pupils.
The latest data from the Department of Education’s Fitnessgram assessment program show the neighborhood has the heaviest kids, with 47 percent listed as overweight or obese.
Overall, roughly 249,600 public-school children are fat or obese, according to 2012-2013 data collected and analyzed by the city Health Department and DOE.
The survey of 605,019 students — adjusted to represent the 640,000 kids enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grade — showed almost no gains were made in the fight against obesity since the program began six years ago.
The data, collected through a Freedom of Information Law request by The Post, measures the body mass index (BMI) of students across 42 health districts.
In city schools, 21 percent of kids are obese and 18 percent are overweight. In the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years, roughly 22 percent were obese. Since 2010-2011, 21 percent have been listed as obese.
Experts say the numbers of overweight kids are “excessively high.”
“This data should serve as a call for more action and intervention to prevent even this level of obesity, which is huge though it has not seemed to rise,” said Dr. Robert Rapaport, director of pediatric endocrinology and diabetes at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
“All schools could use improvement in terms of what foods are accessible to children,” he added. “However, the problem is not just the schools. You need to educate the entire family.”
The zone covering Washington Heights and Inwood has ranked high in overweight kids for four consecutive years.
Parents told The Post they weren’t surprised.
“This is definitely an issue in Washington Heights,” said mom Angie Tavarez, a teaching assistant. “I’ve worked in schools in this area with overly processed foods and no vegetables. But at the end of the day, it comes down to the home.”
Rosa Zorrilla knew the Fitnessgram for her 7-year-old son, Alcedes, would have negative results. The second-grader often eats pasta, fried foods, rice, beans and meat and scored “overweight” on his test.
“We work a lot, and it doesn’t give us time to prepare,” said Zorrilla, a home attendant. “It doesn’t help parents if kids eat unhealthy food at school, because that’s what they’d rather have at home.”
The healthiest students are in Greenwich Village, where 75 percent had a “normal weight.”