White County Elementary Students will use a new schedule this school year after legislators passed a new 40-minute physical activity requirement.
Director Of Schools Kurt Dronebarger told the School Board Thursday night the mandate will take time from science and social studies. Dronebarger said it will hurt the education focus.
“Those teachers are still graded on how the students perform in those classrooms,” Dronebarger said. “We’re basically taking from core subjects in general, math, science, reading language, arts, and ELA. It’s got to come from somewhere there. There is no more time in the day. The legislature has given us way more stuff than we can do in that time. That’s what we’re trying to share with them.”
Dronebarger said the change also tampered with an elementary school schedule that had shown results for the system and worked well.
“We had condensed all of our breaks,” Dronebarger said. “We tried to limit transitions. Every time you leave class to go somewhere and come back, you’re losing ten minutes. Now what we did was lunch and recess were slammed together. When they went to Encore, their pull out classes, our music, that thing, it was slammed together. Now we’ve had to break that up.”
School Board Vice Chair Jayson McDonald said the mandate goes against the legislature’s focus of high standards.
“It’s frustrating to know that the state government, they want us to live to these high standards, but then they want to throw these other things on,” McDonald said.
Dronebarger said he does believe in the importance of physical education and exercise for students. But on the back of so many other requirements passed in the last decade, Dronebarger said it will not work.
“I’m all for recess, I think kids need to run and play as much as anybody, but there’s no more time in the day to do it in the school day,” Dronebarger said. “There’s no more time from 8: 00 to 3: 00 to do anything else that the legislature is telling us to do.”
In other business Thursday night, the board re-elected Bob Young as School Board Chair. McDonald will serve as vice chair.
