Bedminster Parents Petition For Schoolwide Recess Policy

BEDMINSTER, NJ — Hundreds of Bedminster parents have come together to sign a petition asking the school district to implement a recess policy for elementary and middle school students.

Martin Johansson created the petition called "Bedminster Township Public School: School Wide Recess Policy Needed" on change.org and it already has more than 350 signatures.

“Schools are under pressure to fulfill academic and administrative requirements; as a result, recess has become less of a priority. Further complicating matters, many schools struggle with limited budgets and lack the resources to support staffing and supervision required to add more recess,” Johansson said in the petition. “However, mounting evidence shows physical activity provides cognitive, social and emotional benefits for children from kindergarten through high school.”

Johansson noted that be believes the Bedminster School District is great and parents are just looking to make a small change to make it even better for the kids.

The petition was also shared with Bedminster School Superintenendent Jennifer Giordano who said the board “respects the fact that a few community members have spoken out about this topic and are passionate about it.”

She noted though that the petition may have failed to mention, that Bedminster already has a 20 minute recess in place for preschool through fourth grade daily.

However, there is no scheduled recess for Bedminster in middle school at the moment. In Bedminster, students begin middle school in fifth grade and goes through eighth. Giordano said that the district began encouraging students to spend time outside at lunch with their peers.

“It is a work in progress,” Giordano said. “We started it a few months ago at end of last year.”

Giordano noted it is a complicated task to try and rework the school day to include recess in the middle school.

For example, Giordano noted that teachers each have a school day contract that includes a mandated amount of teaching minutes. If recess were to be added, time would have to be taken away from other areas in the day.

“It’s not as easy for the board to make a change so quickly,” Giordano said. “It would require canvassing the community before undertaking any type of change.”

Aside from recess, Bedminster does abide by the state mandated required time to have students in elementary receive 150 minutes of health, safety and physical education per week.

In the middle school, Bedminster goes beyond the state minimum to offer 200 minutes of health, safety and physical education per week.

“It is a bigger undertaking than discussing minutes in a day," Giordano said. “The district is not opposed to having more recess time… We are more than happy to work with the community but we do have to look at community priorities to determine how many minutes should be spent in a multitude of areas.”

The petition will be presented to the Bedminster Board of Education for discussion at the Sept. 28 meeting at 7:30 p.m. at the Bedminster Township Public School at 234 Somerville Road.

For more information on the petition or to sign it, CLICK HERE.

(Image via Shutterstock)

Have a news tip? Email alexis.tarrazi@patch.com.

Get Patch breaking news alerts sent right to your phone with our new app. Download here.