Elementary students in Petersburg won’t get as much physical education next year.
Rae C. Stedman Elementary Principal Heather Conn said it comes down to limited education funding. Renting Petersburg’s community pool and gym is expensive for the Petersburg School District. So is staffing physical education classes. Conn said the district’s tight budget this year means they will have to reduce hours.
“We have been conservatively budgeting but at this time, even we are being affected,” she said.
This isn’t the first year the district has had to make cuts. School officials say that’s because of a lack of state funding. There has been almost no permanent increase in the state’s per-student funding, known as Base Student Allocation, or BSA, since 2017. But operational costs keep going up.
Conn said she doesn’t know exactly how much less gym and swim the kids will have next year – she’ll be working on the schedule this spring.
“I can say it’s not going to be five days,” she said. “I can say it’s not going to be four days. You’re looking at two or three days a week for physical education. I can’t really gauge it, one group of kids is going to get it more than the other group – maybe we have an A week and a B week?”
Conn said regular physical education classes have long been a priority in Petersburg. But she said the norm around the state is once or twice a week. And she says the fact that the Petersburg School District even has a swim program is unusual – she doesn’t know of another similar program in the state.
Right now, elementary students go to gym or swim five days a week. In past years sometimes the number of days they visited gym or swim classes went down – but the total number of minutes in physical education per week remained the same. Conn says next year, both the number of days and minutes will go down.
This year physical education classes are twice as big as they have been in the past, a money-saving experiment that Conn said has been tough on Petersburg’s sole elementary gym and swim teacher. She said there are more behavioral problems when kids are crammed into bigger classes.
But Conn said she knows a decrease in student exercise will also have negative effects on the kids.
“I think that behaviors will increase, definitely,” she said. “It’s hard. It’s hard to sit in your seat all day. Gym and swim – that’s a great little break, that outlet.”
Increased recess could make up for the lack of gym and swim time, but Conn said there’s also a limited number of staff available for recess duty. Plus, scheduling is tight – she said it’s already really hard to find time for all the requirements for teachers and staff.
The district plans to present a draft budget to the school board in April. This year the school district is drafting its budget based on zero increase to state funding, and the maximum amount of local funding allowed by state law. Last year was the first time the Petersburg Borough gave the school district the maximum amount of funding. Conn said that if that happens again and the state legislature passes an increase in public education funding, daily gym and swim will be back on the table.
However, the borough is facing its own budget challenges and is considering its own cuts.
