Longview schools back off recess-reduction plan

Elementary school teaching time will increase up to 20 minutes, but bolder action needed

The Longview School District has backed off its plan to reduce elementary school recess time to create an extra 35 minutes of teaching time each school day.

Instead, is has reached a “compromise” that creates 15 to 20 minutes of additional teaching time but leaves recess time untouched, Superintendent Dan Zorn told me last week.

The new plan has quelled an uproar from hundreds of parents, who cited research that recess and exercise help improve learning by making kids more attentive and reducing discipline problems.  

Yet I can’t help but think the district needs bolder — and in some cases costly — initiatives to get kids learning better.

The district’s initial plan was to increase daily instruction time by 35 minutes by reducing lunch and recess time by 10 minutes each and moving the 15-minute breakfast period to before the opening bell.  It would have added nearly 8% more instruction time to the 7.5-hour school day, or two weeks of time to a 180-day school year.

In place of that plan, the district will not reduce recess time, which will remain 45  minutes in three chunks. However, by scheduling breakfast before school as planned, the district will free up about 15 to 20 minutes for extra daily instruction.

Will such a  small increase serve the district’s purpose — to improve student achievement and test scores, which continue to lag after the pandemic?  It’s easy for 15 or 20 minutes to get lost in the daily shuffle and disruptions of any school day.

Zorn is confident that the additional teaching time, though about half of the amount originally envisioned, should make a difference for struggling students. The extra time will be focused on students needing help in  math and especially reading and literacy, he said.

The additional time will be appended to existing lesson periods, though “in some cases you might see a 15- to 20-minute intervention block,” Zorn said.

The district is sticking with its plans to move student lunch out of classrooms and into gymnasiums, where they will be supervised by paraeducators instead of certified teachers.  Students will get additional time to finish lunch if they can’t finish in 20 minutes.

Zorn acknowledged that the district is taking “a compromise position that gets us additional instruction time and maintains the amount of recess time our kids have been accustomed to in the past.”

Officials had not anticipated the amount of opposition to its original plan, Zorn acknowledged, adding that there was “good, reasoned input” from opponents.

As I wrote previously, I still believe it would have been worth giving the district’s original plan a try. I know that kids — boys especially — need time to burn off energy and that exercise helps improve learning. But Longview’s student test scores are alarmingly low.  Children who don’t read at grade level by 4th grade face long odds for living successful lives. 

Only 44.6% of Longview fifth graders, 33% of fourth graders and 34.6% of third graders met standards in the state’s spring 2022 reading test. Scores were slightly better in science but much lower in math. There was just slight improvement in the 2023 scores.

Perhaps its time for bolder thinking, such as extending the school day, lengthening the school year or adding even more tutoring.  These measures could be costly to pay teaching and support staff for their additional time, and they are not under discussion within the district.

However, Zorn said, “I have always felt that the American school year could be a little longer, ” either by adding or lengthening school days. “Those are discussions worth having, but there has to be a recognition that there would be significant costs.” 

And they likely would have to come out of local taxpayers’ pockets unless the Legislature ramped up school funding, which it is unlikely to do again soon. This is why attracting business and industry to broaden the local tax base is so important, especially as the community continues to age and — perhaps — becomes less willing to pay school taxes.

There’s a chicken-and- egg aspect to all of this. Young professionals often shun this community, partly out of concern for the school’s lagging achievement levels. Good schools boost economic fortunes; poor ones drag them down.

Children can get a fine education in Longview if they live in a supportive environment, and at least at the ballot box the community has typically supported its schools.

However, student achievement here has lagged a long time. School officials should consider holding a broad-based community summit to measure local support for expensive ideas like lengthening the school day and to discuss low-cost ways for how parents and the community can get kids better prepared to learn.  

Why, for example, do only 57% of Longview students regularly attend school, a full 10 percentage points below the state average? 

Why is it that only 41.5% of entering Longview kindergarteners are fully ready to start school (the state average is 48 percent), according to state figures. 

We know some of the root causes of these shortcomings — homelessness, drug abuse and poverty are among them. But what more can we do about them? 

There are not many failing schools in the nation, but there are millions of failing families. I think we all agree that failing parents raise failing kids. 

This is why, for example, it is foolhardy to cut the county’s mental health tax, which pays for drug treatment but which the Cowlitz County commissioners may not renew. Failing to renew the tiny tax —  which costs consumers a penny on a $10 purchase — would be foolhardy. It would hurt kids and families, not just the drug users.

The social and economic factors that undermine kids’ education are too abundant to list here. Somehow, for the sake of our kids,  we need to address them.  An additional 20 minutes of reaching time each day is a start, but it’s far from a panacea.