PTO Today

Our elementary school put in two new playgrounds in the last year. One for the 1st thru 3rd graders, and one for the 4th thru 6th graders. However, the kids are no longer allowed to use the playground equipment before or after school. The school says they do not have anybody to supervise the kids. There are teachers on campus who could be assigned to playground duty for say 15 minutes before and after, however, getting this done would be a challenge.

During recesses the school has Campus Supervisors who monitor the playground. They to don't like to get out in the midst of the kids. They sand back in the shade and yell to stop running, playing, or having fun using a bull horn.

Any thoughts or ideas on how to address this situation???

Thanks,
Dave

Yuk--well perhaps you could offer to have PTO volunteers monitoring the playground before and after but really at our school this wouldn't work. I think it would be too disruptive to have kids out there getting messed up, possibly hurt etc before and after school times. Recess is when our children also use the playground or when a parent escorts them out there after school. The key is after school it is the parents responsbility. At that point I suspect there are also insurance issues that would play a part but I don't know....d

It might also be a nursing staff issue, the first aider might not be availbale after hours, even if parents would offer to help out supervising. Supervision doenst guarantee no accidents.

The place to start to address it is witht the principal or district head, they can give you the reasons for their procedures and what it would take to get proper coverage so kids can play off hours.

Our district does not allow use of playgroud equipment immediately before or after shcool, for various reasons. Most of which involve no one being able to coordinate supervision if the whole school showed up. To be honest, all of our staff have before and after school duties so this is a real issue. I believe they are truely worried about the safety of the kids. If this is something new, I would ask why it had been ok so far and if, like our district, it's been a rule since you were a child, then I would try to focus on helping with the activites they are trying to get kids to do before and after school. We have tutoring, morning reading, breakfast, afterschool programs, etc.

I appreciate the replies so far. As I read them I realized that I was not complete in my original description of the issue....

One of the new sets of playground equipment replaced an older set on the upper-grade side of the school. The other was an addition to the school and went in the middle of a section of grass that the kids used to run on and play tag, chase, etc. In addition to not being able to play on the equipment, they are not allowed to run on the field around it before or after school.

The first aid person is on campus before and after so that is not the issue. After school, or even just before school gets out, younger siblings with their own parents are not allowed to even use the swings. I think it boils down to supervision and god forbid a child gets a scrape.

What is the Districts Campus policy (i.e. At our former school (moved) the school had a Beyond the Bell Program- so the campus was an 'Open Campus' which allowed children to stay after school if not participating in the program but if an injury or a scape occured it was the Parents responsibiltity- even if they were at work and the child was waiting to be picked up

To the best of my knowledge there is no district policy. It's up to the individual school. One of my PTO board members sent me this link today to an article on yahoo on schools banning tag so kids don't have an accident at recess.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061018/...ground_tag_ban

The kids at our school do not use the playground before school, they gather in the gym for breakfast and movie till the teachers come to get their classes and walk their class to their classroom. After school, the district states that the playgrounds must be kept open because of of some sort of taxpayer issue. We faced this problem a couple of years ago when we wanted to put up a fence to keep some one who lived across the streets garbage off the school playground. Everytime there was any kind of wind or animal, the garbage would always end up all over the playground. We also had issues of vandalism and empty alcohol bottles everywhere and also a knife gound on the playground. We were told it had to be kept available to taxpayers for use...

Ours is open to students before and after school. Before school there are monitors. After school there is not. Our school is in the middle of a neighborhood. There is a sign posted that states the playground is open from dawn to dusk. This is due to the taxpayers' issue also.