BILLINGS — Billings School District 2 administration has asked schools to focus more on learning time, and this has caused parents to grow concerned that maximizing time in the classroom equals fewer break times.
"Second day of school, I went to have lunch with my kindergartner and I got there, lunch I think was 11:25 a.m., I got to like 20 minutes early for recess. Then they said recess wasn't for another 10 minutes, I got wrong. Turns out there was only eight minutes of recess," Matthew Onstad said recently. "So, I had to sit there and wait. I was like, 'What happened to recess?'"
Onstad and his wife, Daisy Onstad, own Summit Therapy Center. They are both certified play therapists and know how beneficial play is for kids to learn and grow.
“Unstructured play is one of the most beneficial things for children,” Matthew Onstad said. “They (the schools) have to meet these guidelines, and there's not enough time in the day. This year, somebody made changes that forced more time at the desk for kids, and the new goals are unattainable.”
SD2 Superintendent Dr. Erwin Garcia declined an on-camera interview with MTN News about this specific story, but did discuss the topic in an interview on Aug. 30, 2024.
“Time is critical because we don't have much time,” Garcia said. “The kids need 30 minutes of exercise a day, but we don't want that to turn into an hour and a half of recess and transition time”
Garcia said that curriculum best practices recommend a 90 minute reading block, 30 minutes of writing, a 90 minute math block, and 30 minutes of daily activity. Plus the addition of science and social studies. Garcia said he does not want time to be wasted.
"Hopefully, when the kids come in you already have an activity for the kids as they come in instead of just waiting for everybody to sit down and give a piece of paper to say, 'okay, you can start the lesson,' and 10 minutes already went by. That's that's not maximizing time," Garcia said. “There's mental break time. Who needs mental break time? I mean, we all need mental break time, but I mean if you add snack time to mental break time, so now your time is really running out. So, we we wanted the teachers to be aware that time has to be maximized.”
Garcia said that despite seeing an increase in test scores last year, many schools in the district still struggle with instructional minutes, therefore facing accreditation issues.
“We have to adhere to, you know, the administrative rules of Montana. So, we have set aggregate hours per grade level that we need to adhere to,” Ponderosa Elementary School principal Allison Evertz said. "I think we've got our day structured, kindergarten through fifth grade in such a way that we optimize all of our learning outcomes."
Evertz said she has not heard any worried parents coming to her about recess at her school.
"We know our audience very well. We know and can see when kids need a refocus. We see when students need a break, when they need some kind of breathing or, you know, just to get a little outburst for energy or some sort of outlet," Evertz said.
Garcia said it is up to the school to decide how they structure their recess times, and if a parent has a concern they need to speak with the principal of their child's school.
The Onstads' have three kids in the district, but aren't just worried about their own children. They said they fear the push to maximize time in classrooms will not be as beneficial as the district hopes.
“I think it's unfair. I think we're missing the basic needs that the child needs to be successful,” Daisy Onstad said. “I do want to say a thank you to all the teachers out there, and all the principals out there, who are trying to make this work, even though the expectations for them are extremely, extremely unrealistic."
Matthew Onstad started a Facebook page, Bring Back Recess Billings, to see if any other parents felt the same way he and his wife did. Now, that page has over 250 members.
"We see a lot of children coming and looking for outpatient services around October, November, because finally, it's getting to the point where, it's (school) too much for the kiddos. We are having parents calling us this week, because their children cannot maintain at school," Daisy Onstad said.
Lorinne Burke is a licensed counselor and pediatric therapist. She said she is already seeing the impacts from the new school structure on her clients.
“You're going to have kids that simply cannot handle it. You're going to have a lot more breakdowns towards the end of the day,” Burke said. “The changes are causing greater behavioral disturbances in my children I work with in my job.”
