North Shore news powered by The Daily Item MARBLEHEAD — After the School Committee passed its flag policy 4-1 Thursday night it also performed a first reading for the drafted Elementary Recess Policy for grades K-6 The policy states that “all elementary students in grades K-6 shall be provided with no fewer than two scheduled recess periods per school day totaling a minimum of 35 minutes of recess time.” This policy is “in alignment with the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP),” and it “affirms the district’s commitment to the physical and emotional well-being of elementary school students.” Vice Chair Alison Taylor explained: “We’ve always had two recesses A previous administration one year decided to remove one of our recesses There was pandemonium – teachers and community members and parents alike – over that Committee member Sarah Fox added that she “would go as far as to say” that “it was unanimous.” “It was unanimous that a second recess benefits children and it was talked about ad nauseum and different studies and why it was important,” she said We voted to make the recommendation that it go back permanently The then-assistant superintendent oversaw that committee the recommendation of the committee was never brought back.” Committee member Brian Ota said “the whole reason why the previous administration refused to give us back two recesses was (because) they said time on learning from the State required every minute to be spent this way.” He then asked He said the State mandated 900 hours of learning time and that this policy would still allow for that which will be equal to 35 minutes… that would get us back to 910 hours,” he said Robidoux added that two 20-minute recesses would put Marblehead schools below the 900 hour threshold Committee member Al Williams asked why this policy was only for grades K-6 “I would never be in disagreement giving children unstructured time because I think it ultimately does make everything better particularly when they get older and (they’re) not seeing (their) friends in class and (they’re) only seeing them when (they) go out to recess because the fifth grade goes together,” Taylor said “I wouldn’t be against it for the older grades but I think it’s just not something that they ever had.” Committee member Sarah Fox wanted to ensure that the additional half days added to the 2025-26 school calendar had been taken into account because if they weren’t she would consider amending the calendar to accommodate this policy Since the Committee wanted to gather more information and data that could assist their decision-making offline this conversation will continue at the policy’s second reading Amanda Lurey has been a news reporter for The Daily Item since February 2025 when she moved to Massachusetts from Oregon but she is passionate about traveling and seeing all that the world has to offer most recently checking Antarctica off her list and she is also well known for being an animal lover at heart The views expressed here are the author's own We'll use written and visual prompts to stretch our writing muscles The takeaway can be a new piece you're proud of discovering new tools to fuel your creativity or just enjoying the writing zone with others Call us: Phone: (334) 293-5800 Design by TinyFrog Technologies Privacy Policy Web Accessibility Site Map This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page.