'Structured Recess' Concerns Tatem Parents

At the monthly meeting of the Collingswood Board of Education Monday night, parent Keith Berlin spoke in faltering tones about the impact that a structured recess period is having on second-grade classes at William P. Tatem Elementary School.

Things are so bad, Berlin said, that his kids "hope for rain so they can stay inside."

Instead of being able to role play, invent games or even just chase each other around, Berlin said, students are limited to a handful of options including kickball and basketball.

This unfairly limits their choices, he said.

“They’re not allowed to have imaginary play,” he said. “These kids need time to be creative and physically active.”

Emily Talley, whose second- and third-graders attend Tatem, said her children “spoke very openly" about how much “they don’t like recess.

“They’re not having a good time,” she said.

Berlin’s wife, Amy, read a Facebook comment she said was made by a Tatem School lunch aide, that “the lunch division…just didn’t work this year.”

She also presented remarks from her children: “A lunch aide yelled in my face because I am standing in the mulch” and “How come the kids in my class can’t play with the other second-grade class?”

Connie Correia-Fisher reported that her son was disciplined for “standing up and doing nothing” because the playground rules required that children be seated if they didn’t wish to participate in the activities laid out for them.

“It seems like every single time something else happens, [building manager] Mrs. [Jennifer] McPartland comes up with another rule or says nobody can do anything,” Keith Berlin said.

“P.E. is a place for structure,” he said. “That’s important and that’s justified, but that’s not recess.”

'Issues at Tatem that we don’t have with any other school'

Superintendent Scott Oswald thanked the parents for their concerns, but said that there was more to the subject than he could discuss at length in a public forum.

“The second-grade issue has to do with a group of parents,” Oswald said. “Me getting into detail about that would embarrass half of the second-grade parents at Tatem.”

“As sure as I am sitting here, the change was not made because a student got a skinned knee,” said Oswald.

“A 15-minute game of tag turns into 10 minutes of shoving someone against the wall,” Oswald said, and the disciplinary fallout from an event like that distracts a school administration that needs to be focused on educational priorities.

“We have issues on the Tatem playground that we don’t have with any other school [in the district],” Oswald said. “The answer may be that we need to limit some of that free play.”

Oswald further expressed his hope that parents would bring their issues to him or to other administrators directly before coming to the board. Oswald also asked whether the group of parents had spoken with their PTA about it; they seemed to indicate that they had not.

“I’d be happy to try to address them with you and come up with solutions,” he said. “That’s the appropriate method to address that. This body is not equipped to come up with solutions.”

“I’ve been in discussion with Mrs. McPartland a couple times and she said she spoke with you and a couple others,” Keith Berlin said. “I felt as if she was being very dismissive to my concerns and my issues.

“This letter that she sent out to the second-grade students, many of us feel that the tone of that letter was very inappropriate,” he said.

Board president James Hatzell backed Oswald’s position that administrative oversight of playground dynamics wasn’t necessarily something the board was prepared to remark upon.

“This is blind-siding me,” Hatzell said. “We don’t make decisions off the cuff.”