Parents recently expressed concern to the International Falls School District about elimination of time set aside for recess for grades five and six.
The change comes with the district’s elementary grade reconfiguration, moving early childhood and first and second grade to Falls Elementary School, and fifth and sixth grade to the West End Elementary School building, adjacent to Falls High School. The change is slated to begin next school year.
In addition to the recess issue, confusion about how fifth and sixth grade will operate adjacent to the high school has arisen since the school board approved the change in February, according to Tim Everson, Falls High School principal.
Since the board’s proposal and subsequent approval, “numerous questions have been brought to the district’s attention,” Everson said.
To address the issue, information on the change was released to the public Monday. Everson compiled the information, along with answers to “frequently asked questions,” and posted it on the district’s website. The information includes input from district and school administrators and teachers, Everson said.
“I do think there will be a lot of positives,” he told The Journal. “Nothing is going to be set in stone that we can’t change.”
The recess concern involves reducing fifth and sixth grade lunch time to 25 minutes — the current schedule allows 45 minutes for lunch and recess — to allow more frequent physical education and music classes. With the proposed plan, no time is specifically set aside for recess.
However, the change allows for increased time for both physical education and music; time for each will be set aside three days a week, instead of once a week, according to elementary Principal Jerry Hilfer.
“That doesn’t preclude teachers from scheduling recess another time throughout the day,” Hilfer said. “That way, it will be a smaller group of students outside instead of the whole crew, and an advantage of that is they’ll have supervision of their teacher instead of a paraprofessional.”
In the release, Everson wrote, “Replacing noon hour recess with more structured classes for fifth and sixth graders will provide less opportunity for bullying or harassment issues to arise.”
Every fourth week, students will have an extra day of physical education and music, Hilfer said. Making changes in when teachers’ preparatory hours take place allowed for the change. He arranged the schedule for a time slot of an hour (when teachers have prep hour) to split the students having physical education and music in two rooms, and in the middle of that hour, they are scheduled to switch.
Currently, teachers have prep time during the lunch and recess “noon hour” during which paraprofessionals supervise the students.
With the change, Hilfer was also able to make two part-time fifth- and sixth-grade teaching positions to full time to increase the supervision hours.
“It was a really tough puzzle for me to solve, so it took me a while,” he said of restructuring schedules to add music and physical education time, address bullying, and make staffing changes with the teacher layoffs approved by the school board this week.
Everson added, “What had to happen to add more physical education time without cutting out any academics was to change noon hour. The time had to come from somewhere.”
Contrary to rumors, Everson said, the fifth and sixth graders in West End will work in the same way as the current younger grades in that building. The doors will not be open between the elementary and high school hallways, and students in grades 5 and 6 will not be with the high schoolers when they eat lunch. They will not share classes, locker rooms or bus lines with students in grades 7 to 12.
“There’s been some confusion out there about fifth and sixth graders being allowed to roam the high school, which they won’t,” Everson said. “We’ll run it like we run West End right now.”
The same confusion occurred in 2005 in initially moving students into West End Elementary, Everson explained.
“In 2005, we tweaked things as we went and worked through different things as they came up,” Everson said. “We’re going to look at how things run this time, and we’re going to make changes accordingly.”
Benefits of the swap are numerous, he said. Prekindergarten through fourth grade staff will be more able to work together to implement the “Reading Well by Third Grade” state initiative.
“Educational improvement strategies that focus on the early years — preventing children from falling behind in the first place — have a much better chance of long-term success than those that emphasize remediation later on,” Everson said. “Placing prekindergarten to grade 4 students all in one building will foster and support the school improvement initiatives stated in our ‘Reading Well by Third Grade’ local plan.”
The movement of students will also allow for more flexible scheduling at both the lower elementary and middle school levels, he said, with the opportunity to share common staff.
Everson told The Journal that the district has received calls and emails expressing concern about the elimination of recess for grades 5 and 6 students, especially those at the fifth grade level. The concern is revolves around the time in which students go outside and get fresh air, Everson said.
“There are a number of people who want kids to be getting outside, so that’s something we’ll have to look at in how we can make that happen,” he said. “Once the school year starts and we run through the schedule for a week, we’ll have a better idea of the things that might work and things that may not work.”
