Extra PE time for 3rd, 4th, & 5th Graders

As of Monday, Feb. 1, we will be strictly following district guidelines with respect to how much PE time each student receives. We will no longer be allowing additional PE time for 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders to accommodate the structure of “fitness days” at Prairieland. I would like to share the reasons for this decision with you.

First and foremost, let me tell you how proud I am of our PE teachers at Prairieland. Their dedication to each child’s overall physical fitness is well known throughout the Prairieland community. Not only are our PE teachers passionate about providing high-quality instruction and physical activities during PE time at school, but they also care deeply about our students' development of healthy habits outside of the school day. We are fortunate to have such committed teachers at Prairieland.

That being said, we have been providing additional PE time each week for our 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students to participate in “fitness days”. While the activities provided during fitness days are of the highest quality, it requires adding time to PE classes. When that happens, we lose instructional time for core academic subjects such as reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies. This cannot occur for the following reasons.

Maximizing classroom instructional time for our children must be a priority. The Unit 5 and Prairieland mission statement is, “Educating each child to achieve personal excellence”. In order to realize that mission statement, it is critical that we maximize instructional time for all of the core subject areas. We cannot give up time spent on the core subjects for the sake of extra PE time. Fitness days may continue in PE, but must occur within the allotted amount of time established by the district.

Unit 5 has district-wide standards that dictate how much time we are allowed to teach art, music, PE, and IMC each week. It is not up to a building to decide whether or not they want to exceed the allotted number of minutes per week for an area class. We must follow the amounts of time designated by the district for each subject area.

As principal, I owe all of our students and parents an apology for not catching this situation earlier. Let me be clear, this situation is not the fault of our teachers. I do believe the teachers acted in good faith thinking I was supportive of the extra PE time. This was my own fault due to my own miscommunication. It is my responsibility as principal to know these things and I am the one at fault for allowing this to occur.

Recently when I became aware of how fitness days were being implemented, I had to decide whether to address this situation now or to "let it slide” for the rest of the year. Trust me, letting it slide crossed my mind because I know something like this would not be easy to deal with and it would have the potential to create divisions within our school community. While I truly hope that we don’t become divided over this issue, I do believe it needs to be addressed immediately. When students’ instructional time is at stake, we cannot afford to wait.

I understand that there are parents who will feel strongly that fitness days should continue as is, others who wish it would have never have happened in the first place, and still others who may not be concerned either way. When we discuss this situation as a school community, I only hope we stay focused on the reasons we all care so much – because we love our children and only want what’s best for each one of them.

After school activities cancelled Wed., Jan. 20

Due to inclement weather, all after school activities are cancelled this evening.  The only exception is the NPR After School Daycare Program, which will follow it's regular dismissal schedule.

School will dismiss at 3:15 p.m. as usual.

Cougar Chorus, Girl Scouts, and all other functions in the gym are cancelled this evening.