A Prince George’s County charter school will end recess in an effort to shorten the school day.

College Park Academy, a middle school, will end 35 minutes earlier once the change goes into effect, the Washington Post reported.

The county’s Board of Education approved the change by a 12-0 vote Thursday, after teachers suggested the change.

The school had a longer school day than most middle schools. Teachers said students were extremely tired by the end of the day, said Frank Brewer, interim executive director of the academy.

Brewer said cutting recess was a way to shorten the day without affecting instructional time.

The school is currently in session from 8:25 a.m. to 3:55 p.m. After cutting recess, school will end at 3:20 p.m. >>>Read more NBC4 News  >> Washington Post

OPINION:

Some of the policies we are seeing under Dr. Segun Eubanks leadership and Dr. Maxwell via County Executive Baker are not good for the children of Prince George’s County. The list includes among other things; over crowded buses, Union interferences, overpayment of Board staff at Sasscer, recruitment of lawyers connected to friends working for the Board and the list is endless. This is not why we requested for proper changes at the Prince George’s County Public schools. These officers are making our school system worse.

We agree with the statement by Washington Post. Playtime can be as important as class time for helping students perform their best.

Recess is most children’s favorite period, and parents and teachers should encourage that trend, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). (Read more)  Recess can be a critical time for development and social interaction, and in a new policy statement published in the journal Pediatrics, pediatricians from the AAP support the importance of having a scheduled break in the school day. “Children need to have downtime between complex cognitive challenges,” says Dr. Robert Murray, a pediatrician and professor of human nutrition at the Ohio State University who is a co-author of the statement. “They tend to be less able to process information the longer they are held to a task. It’s not enough to just switch from math to English. You actually have to take a break.”

The AAP committee that developed the statement began its research in 2007, expecting to discover that recess is important as a physical outlet for children. What they found, however, was that playtime’s benefits extend beyond the physical. “We came to the realization that it really affects social, emotional and cognitive development in a much deeper way than we’d expected,” she says. “It helps children practice conflict resolution if we allow them unstructured play, and it lets them come back to class more ready to learn and less fidgety.” Read more  courtesy Health and Family Blog  >>>Obesity: Playing Three or More Sports Cuts the Rate of Overweight Teens

Continuous corruption and manipulation of the institutions for personal gains of a few individuals in the county, is not the answer!

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Prince George’s County school board chairman Segun Eubanks listens to parents and staff speak. He has been laughing all the way to the Bank recently…

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