Well that didn't take long for Lafayette parents to start being insane about the new principal. And they got useful idiot Alex Koma -- whose reporting chops have proven, over and over again, to be extremely lacking -- to print their complaints verbatim. Nice work!

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.

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.

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

It's not really about the cold here. Or not just about that. It's about the daily freeze-thaw that creates constant, changeable slipperiness and wetness, and isn't very fun. Totally different from my New England childhood where we merrily sledded every recess.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not at Lafayette but our principal also told us 32 is the threshold (though I don't know where it comes from beyond that). Seems silly to me -- recess isn't even that long, I'm not sure why the temperature threshold would need to be so high.

Are you slow? 32 is the degree for freezing. So that puddle that a child sees on the ground and they think is a pool of water is actually slippery ice. My own driveway is still ice. It melts and freezes every day.

I am not unusually slow, but I did come from a district where the threshold was feels like 15 degrees. I did not know about your child constantly slipping on ice, apologies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not at Lafayette but our principal also told us 32 is the threshold (though I don't know where it comes from beyond that). Seems silly to me -- recess isn't even that long, I'm not sure why the temperature threshold would need to be so high.

Are you slow? 32 is the degree for freezing. So that puddle that a child sees on the ground and they think is a pool of water is actually slippery ice. My own driveway is still ice. It melts and freezes every day.

Ice melt is your friend.

Also kids in other parts of the country go outside in far colder weather.

Anonymous wrote:I'm not at Lafayette but our principal also told us 32 is the threshold (though I don't know where it comes from beyond that). Seems silly to me -- recess isn't even that long, I'm not sure why the temperature threshold would need to be so high.

Are you slow? 32 is the degree for freezing. So that puddle that a child sees on the ground and they think is a pool of water is actually slippery ice. My own driveway is still ice. It melts and freezes every day.

I'm not at Lafayette but our principal also told us 32 is the threshold (though I don't know where it comes from beyond that). Seems silly to me -- recess isn't even that long, I'm not sure why the temperature threshold would need to be so high.

The school where i work calls for indoor recess any time the 'feels like' temperature drops to 34. It's very frustrating and i feel sorry for the kids. Meanwhile my own kids in another school district have had outdoor recess nearly every day until it snowed last week.

Since the snow I can understand. It's really hard to mitigate snow and ice with the current temps melting and refreezing constantly. That petition letter is dated December 16 though.

No outdoor recess since the snow at our DCPS elementary. Sounds like they've been doing a lot of Go Noodle during school while aftercare has resorted to (IMO unreasonable) amounts of TV.

They typically do go outside when it's just cold.

Drainage is an issue at a lot of playgrounds, for sure. It makes the kids wet and cold, and parents don't like their kid to be muddy, it's undignified. One of the best things we did for our DCPS was aggressively work on water diversion, some French drains and also a lot of mulch. DCPS wasn't very helpful so some things we just went ahead and DIY-ed.

But it doesn't seem like falling on a spongy surface should be a problem. That's why it's spongy, no?

New Loose Lips article on Lafayette not going outside for over a month (https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/756340/kids-at-lafayette-elementary-have-been-stuck-inside-for-recess-for-weeks-is-a-new-extra-slippery-playground-to-blame/).

Not to litigate too much, because I can see where the principal is coming from in safety concerns, though not her lack of communication, it seems very concerning that a brand new playground has this many issues. Are other schools currently going outside for recess and has any other school been told about the temperature rule? I've heard it before but also couldn't find a specific policy.