Outdoor Recess and DCPS Playgrounds

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure but my FCPS went out well below 32, so this isn’t even standard for the area.

+1. There are ice and frozen puddles on every playground in cold weather climates. I would bet money the DCPS policy is based on equity concerns. They can't ensure every kid will come to school with a proper coat, hat, gloves, they don't want to make the poor kids stay inside, and they don't want vastly different outdoor recess policies in Ward 3 and Ward 8 schools. So it's a bright line rule that keeps all kids safe and doesn't ask schools to make judgment calls about what coats kids are wearing.

Funny enough, our Ward 3 DCPS doesn't have recess outdoors, but they sure do bundle kids up and take them outside during "class time." Compliant with the policy indeed.

It's partly equity but also partly a cultural thing. The staff knows they will have dissatisfied parents if they don't go out, and different dissatisfied parents if they do, so they can't win. They don't have enough staff to stay in ratio while some kids go out and some stay in. And different people and different cultures have different ideas about what's "too cold". Plenty of people can afford adequate clothing and yet just think it's unpleasant to be out in the cold and don't want it required of their kids.

This plus often the staff don't won't to go out when it's cold.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry for the poor formatting due to copy and paste. Doesn’t look like this is available publicly but is accessible to staff with a little digging.

Guidance labed SY2024
Looks like it came out of the Office of Social Emotional and Academic Development.

Cold Weather Advisory
A cold weather advisory is announced when cold weather conditions have a high risk of bodily harm.
Children should be indoors under temperatures below 32 degrees Fahrenheit including the wind chill
index, which is the temperature the body feels when exposed to wind speed. Teachers should exercise
caution at temperatures below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Dangers to children under these weather
conditions include frostbite and hypothermia.
Teachers will be informed by their principals when weather conditions merit a cold weather advisory. To
make that determination, principals will check the National Weather Service (NWS) at
https://www.weather.gov/ for local and national weather forecasts and information on weather alerts.

Thanks you!

[Anonymous]

I feel like DGS is really getting to slide by this issue. We can argue until blue about the exact temperature but a brand new $50,000 playground is apparently unusable due to safety concerns. Seems less than ideal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teachers should exercise caution at temperatures below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Dangers to children under these weather
conditions include frostbite and hypothermia.

Ok, but this is absolutely WILD. Exercise caution below 40 degrees?! What? We literally live in a four-season climate. Recess is in the middle of the day - and includes the warmest moment of nearly every day. I would love to know who wrote this guidance and how they think it benefits kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel like DGS is really getting to slide by this issue. We can argue until blue about the exact temperature but a brand new $50,000 playground is apparently unusable due to safety concerns. Seems less than ideal.

And yet if you read the WCP story, that whole side of the issue is kind of hand-waved away. Instead, the reporter wholeheartedly bought into the Lafayette parents' ludicrous narrative that it's entirely because of the new principal's incompetence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like DGS is really getting to slide by this issue. We can argue until blue about the exact temperature but a brand new $50,000 playground is apparently unusable due to safety concerns. Seems less than ideal.

And yet if you read the WCP story, that whole side of the issue is kind of hand-waved away. Instead, the reporter wholeheartedly bought into the Lafayette parents' ludicrous narrative that it's entirely because of the new principal's incompetence.

Come on. Keeping an entire school of kids indoors indefinitely because one MIGHT slip is complete incompetence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like DGS is really getting to slide by this issue. We can argue until blue about the exact temperature but a brand new $50,000 playground is apparently unusable due to safety concerns. Seems less than ideal.

And yet if you read the WCP story, that whole side of the issue is kind of hand-waved away. Instead, the reporter wholeheartedly bought into the Lafayette parents' ludicrous narrative that it's entirely because of the new principal's incompetence.

Come on. Keeping an entire school of kids indoors indefinitely because one MIGHT slip is complete incompetence.

Exactly. And there are other outdoor spaces the kids could play.

[Anonymous]

Taking it to the media is wild, though. Then again, so is publishing this garbage. Like yes, maybe a DGS mistake is newsworthy. But the rest just stinks of airing our dirty laundry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like DGS is really getting to slide by this issue. We can argue until blue about the exact temperature but a brand new $50,000 playground is apparently unusable due to safety concerns. Seems less than ideal.

And yet if you read the WCP story, that whole side of the issue is kind of hand-waved away. Instead, the reporter wholeheartedly bought into the Lafayette parents' ludicrous narrative that it's entirely because of the new principal's incompetence.

Multiple schools and parents testified to SBOE that DCPS and charters have unsafe air quality last night and the education stories we get are not about wholesale issues with DGS but a back-and-forth with a WOTP principal and parents about recess (that certainly seems like it may also be a DGS issue) and no real investigation.

One major issue with DC schools is a local media that is critically underfunded and also unwilling to investigate school issues with regularity.

[Anonymous]

Of all the DCPS stories Koma could have pursued, he chose to do one about a spat between privileged WOTP parents and a new principal, and decided to slant the entire article in favor of the parents when even a cursory investigation likely would have revealed that DGS was much more at fault (I know Lafayette parents won't accept this and want the principal's head on platter already). His lack of news judgment is really astonishing. I knew his reputation as a stenographer for Charles Allen and Brianne Nadeau already wasn't great. This just makes it worse.

[Anonymous]

As an uninterested observer who read the article, I took away both that DGS was at fault, and the principal was being overly cautious.

Not much can be done about the former for now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure but my FCPS went out well below 32, so this isn’t even standard for the area.

+1. There are ice and frozen puddles on every playground in cold weather climates. I would bet money the DCPS policy is based on equity concerns. They can't ensure every kid will come to school with a proper coat, hat, gloves, they don't want to make the poor kids stay inside, and they don't want vastly different outdoor recess policies in Ward 3 and Ward 8 schools. So it's a bright line rule that keeps all kids safe and doesn't ask schools to make judgment calls about what coats kids are wearing.

Funny enough, our Ward 3 DCPS doesn't have recess outdoors, but they sure do bundle kids up and take them outside during "class time." Compliant with the policy indeed.

It's partly equity but also partly a cultural thing. The staff knows they will have dissatisfied parents if they don't go out, and different dissatisfied parents if they do, so they can't win. They don't have enough staff to stay in ratio while some kids go out and some stay in. And different people and different cultures have different ideas about what's "too cold". Plenty of people can afford adequate clothing and yet just think it's unpleasant to be out in the cold and don't want it required of their kids.

This plus often the staff don't won't to go out when it's cold.

Right. For cultural reasons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure but my FCPS went out well below 32, so this isn’t even standard for the area.

+1. There are ice and frozen puddles on every playground in cold weather climates. I would bet money the DCPS policy is based on equity concerns. They can't ensure every kid will come to school with a proper coat, hat, gloves, they don't want to make the poor kids stay inside, and they don't want vastly different outdoor recess policies in Ward 3 and Ward 8 schools. So it's a bright line rule that keeps all kids safe and doesn't ask schools to make judgment calls about what coats kids are wearing.

Funny enough, our Ward 3 DCPS doesn't have recess outdoors, but they sure do bundle kids up and take them outside during "class time." Compliant with the policy indeed.

It's partly equity but also partly a cultural thing. The staff knows they will have dissatisfied parents if they don't go out, and different dissatisfied parents if they do, so they can't win. They don't have enough staff to stay in ratio while some kids go out and some stay in. And different people and different cultures have different ideas about what's "too cold". Plenty of people can afford adequate clothing and yet just think it's unpleasant to be out in the cold and don't want it required of their kids.

This plus often the staff don't won't to go out when it's cold.

Right. For cultural reasons.

This might come across dumb or insincere (it's not!): what does this mean exactly? Is it about avoiding discomfort? A fear that the cold will lead to illness? Something else?

[Anonymous]

I'm a child care center director in DC and this is what we follow more or less, with some common sense thrown into the mix (for example, we'll stay out a little longer if it's calm and sunny vs. cloudy and blustery):
https://earlychildhood.marylandpublicschools.org/system/files/filedepot/3/child_care_weather_watch.pdf

Even so, I'm constantly battling staff and parents who think children should not go out at all when it's cold outside because they'll get sick.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Taking it to the media is wild, though. Then again, so is publishing this garbage. Like yes, maybe a DGS mistake is newsworthy. But the rest just stinks of airing our dirty laundry.

Very typical of a certain small group of Lafayette parents. They don’t have the self awareness to understand that they don’t have to use their fancy lawyer skills to bully a new principal.