Court upholds ruling for teachers

Meaning of ‘recess’ key to appellate finding in school case

The true meaning of recess was integral to an Arkansas Court of Appeals decision released Wednesday.

Ultimately, the court’s judges found that recess means “a suspension of business or procedure (as of a legislative body, court, school) for a comparatively short time” or “a period lasting from 10 minutes to an hour that intervenes between the class or study periods of a school day and is used for rest, play, or lunch.”

Based on that definition — which a judge found in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary — the court upheld a lower court ruling that the Pulaski County Special School District was violating a 2003 law aimed at stopping schools from assigning teachers more than 60 minutes of “non-instructional duties” per week.

The case began in 2014 when teachers Pam Fitzgiven and Janice Lewis sued the Pulaski County district over its policy for watching students during a “physical activity” period held 15 minutes per day.

In the 2011-12 school year, the school district employed monitors to keeps tabs on students during a “recess” period. During that period, teachers were permitted to grade papers, call parents, and plan and prepare for the next class.

Starting in the 2012-13 school year, the school implemented a “physical activity” period.

“The main, if not only, difference between the previous recess period and the new physical-activity period was that during this new physical-activity period certified teachers, instead of the paid monitors, were required to supervise the children,” wrote Judge Kenneth Hixson in the majority opinion.

Because overseeing the “physical activity” period was unrelated to teaching duties, the court sided with the teachers and against the Pulaski County Special School District, which had appealed the case.

The Arkansas School Board Association — along with the Camden-Fairview, El Dorado, Hope, Jacksonville/North Pulaski, Lafayette County and West Memphis school districts — had filed a brief supporting the Pulaski County district’s position.

The association contended

that the “physical activity” period was an extension of students’ gym class and that students “put into practice what they learned in the training and instruction time.”

The General Assembly had linked the two activities by requiring both physical education training and physical activity time, the association said.

In response, Hixson wrote that school officials said students played football, some played basketball, others sat and talked, and some did homework.

“Students chose what they wanted to do,” he wrote.

Lucas Harder, policy services director for the Arkansas School Boards Association, said Wednesday that the ruling “could have a substantial impact throughout the state.”

Providing guidance to school districts on what is allowed is helpful, Harder said, but “it also puts districts at a hardship in trying to make sure that they abide by that.”

Generally speaking, he said, guided physical activities are instructional, while unstructured play is recess.

Harder said he doesn’t know how many other districts are using teachers to monitor recess in excess of 60 minutes per week.

“I hope — because districts want to be in bounds of the law — they will find some way to make sure they can comply,” he said.

The 2003 law does allow teachers to perform more than 60 minutes of noninstructional duties per week so long as they are compensated under an additional contract.

The Arkansas Education Association, which represents teachers, did not return a request for comment Wednesday.