Play Today * Play Haters

Once upon a time, an elementary school in Davidson, N.C. had a lovely tradition. On Friday afternoons, fifth graders with parental permission left the confines of their classroom to play on the Village Green. And the best part? They did it all by themselves!

But the school has decided to ban on the longtime tradition—even with an OK from mom and dad, students can no longer walk to the Green from school. Instead, they must ride home on the school bus or get picked up by their parents. 

Why? The school’s interim principal told Davidson News that “students are too young to be out without an adult.” The ban was prompted by complaints about safety and unruly behavior.

Davidson residents used to see around a hundred students congregating on the Green and strolling down Main Street on any given Friday afternoon. But after the ban was enacted, the town center was “eerily quiet, with only a handful of students visible,” according to Davidson News. “One group of four fifth-grade girls said their parents had picked them up at school and dropped them off downtown. But playmates were few.”

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A tree house in Fairfax, Va. may soon meet an untimely demise. That is, if the Fairfax County zoning board gets its way.

When he left for Iraq, Mark Grapin, an Army aviation specialist, promised his two sons he would build them a tree house when he got home. He wanted to give them a special hideaway, the kind that he had growing up, when according to The Washington Post, he and his friends “built a tree house using bent nails, apple crates and whatever else they could scavenge.”

In this day and age, Grapin knew his childhood tree house would be a lawsuit waiting to happen. So when he returned from Iraq, he invested $1,400 to build a sturdy structure and made sure to contact the county to ask if he needed any special permits. He was assured he did not. It was only after he built the thing that the county board of zoning enforcement told him he had to take it down.

Why? Because Grapin owns a corner lot, and his backyard is actually considered a front yard, meaning he has to follow the zoning code. Merni Fitzgerald, a spokeswoman for the county, told The Washington Post, “It’s no different from a shed or a garage or any structure.”

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Researchers get it. Parents get it. Teachers get it. And kids most certainly get it.
Instinct and common sense dictate that recess is a vital and productive component of the school day, but some people still don’t get it. Superintendant Mark Conrad in Nashua, N.H. is one such person.

Conrad and Nashua elementary school principals have decided to eliminate a second 15-minute recess period for 2nd – 5th grade students. Conrad asserts that the second recess period creates a "significant disruption" in the school day, according to the Nashua Telegraph, and sometimes results in a "significant loss of learning." Students will instead use those 15 minutes for “enrichment in math and reading.”

Conrad adds, “Very few districts have a second recess.” It’s true—eliminating recess periods is not a trend limited to Nashua, despite that fact that it flies in the face of multiple studies proving that recess improves classroom behavior. That’s not to mention that children in Finnish elementary schools—who get an average of 75 minutes of recess a day—consistently rank higher than U.S. children in International Student Assessment Scores.

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