ORLANDO, Fla. – A group of moms in Central Florida fighting to save recess in elementary schools staged a rally that included their children on Tuesday.
They gathered outside the Orange County Public Schools administration building to greet board members and the public as they went inside to attend Tuesday's school board meeting.
Recess was not on the agenda, but the parents said they wanted to keep the issue alive.
A couple of moms got behind the cause to try and get the Orange County School Board to put a recess policy in place in October. They say their children were coming home tired and not getting the chance to go out and play each day. The moms want the policy to require 20 minutes a day of unstructured play for every elementary school student.
"I feel that elementary school is a time when you have a very short window of opportunity to enstill that level of learning and children," said parent Angela Browning. "And my kids were losing it.
The parents suggest requiring at least 20 minutes of play time per day.
Right now, there is no policy requiring any recess time in OCPS elementary schools, although an OCPS spokesperson says 100 of the elementary schools do have some sort of recess time.
That leaves 23 elementary schools that do not.
"We do not disagree that recess can be good for children. It's just a matter of having enough minutes in the day to get it all done," Superintendent Barabra Jenkins told Local 6 after that meeting.
The moms though, say they won't give up. As it stands, principals at each elementary school have the discretion to decide when children go out for recess. Some students go out daily, other a couple times a week and some not at all. That is why some moms want a policy in place that would apply to all elementary schools.
"We want the school board to know that we're not going away, that this is just the beginning. That we're going to keep the pressure on and we really hope we can open their hearts and their minds to putting the well being of our children first," said Browning.