Port Washington Superintendent of Schools Kathleen Mooney said Tuesday that the district’s ban on the use of hard balls during recess at Weber Middle School would only be temporary, until ongoing construction is completed next month.
Last week, the school district drew media attention when it banned footballs, baseballs, soccer balls, lacrosse balls and others that could cause harm to children, as well as games of tag and cartwheels performed without adult supervision.
“Because of the construction project, there is limited space for the students to enjoy a 20-minute recess period,” Mooney said at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting, reading from a prepared statement that had been issued earlier this week on the district’s Web site. “With children in such close proximity to each other, it is not safe for them to be engaged in unstructured play with hard balls. For that reason the district has provided Nerf balls for this 20-minute recess period. Absent the confined space within which recess must temporarily be held, such restrictions would not be necessary.”
Board President Karen Sloan said the construction has taken longer than expected, and was not initially expected to interfere with recess time.
Once the work is finished, Mooney said the ban will be lifted.
“As the superintendent, with the full support of the board, once the construction project is completed and the field is restored, the recess period at middle school will be restored to its usual practice,” Mooney said.
In an e-mail to the Manhasset Times on Tuesday afternoon, Mooney said that once the construction is completed, the field will require additional maintenance and may not re-open for use until the spring.
“As we are heading into the winter months when outdoor recess is dependent the weather, it may not be until early spring when the field will be back in use,” Mooney said in the e-mail.
Parents in attendance said the ban has severely limited the amount of fun their children can have in the short period of time they are not in the classroom.
Dave Sattinger, the parent of a Weber Middle School student, asked how much safer the students can possibly be during recess, as the school has a new security system with guards, fencing, and an artificially-turfed field across the street across the street.
“It just doesn’t seem like we’re being common sense-oriented or problem solving here,” Sattinger said. “It seems like we’re more worried about liabilities and what our lawyers are telling us.”
Sattinger said that when he asked his son what he did at recess earlier this week, in light of the recent ban, he replied, “We just walked around and played with dirt.”
