Lafayette Elementary School has a newly renovated playground, access to a nearby park and athletic field, and roughly 900 energetic young students. So why have kids been cooped up inside during recess for most of the past month?
Parents at the Chevy Chase school tell Loose Lips they’ve been tearing their hair out trying to answer that question these past few weeks. As their kids became increasingly stir-crazy, more than 200 parents signed a petition begging the school’s principal, Katie Prall, for answers shortly after she began canceling outdoor activities during the first week of December. Other nearby schools have held outdoor recess as normal over the same time period, despite the cold weather, driving the temperature higher on what has quickly become a hot-button issue in the tony Northwest neighborhood.
“Our children, many of whom have grown up at Lafayette and thrived in previous years in its plentiful outdoor spaces, have spent their recess breaks this year in overcrowded and chaotic environments, sometimes with up to sixty students in a single classroom,” the parents wrote in a Dec. 16 letter to Prall that was forwarded to LL. “The heightened noise levels, restricted movement, and severe overstimulation take a toll on students and faculty alike.”
With the holidays and recent snowstorm finally over, organizers of this movement say they met with Prall last week and took some steps toward getting kids back outside on a regular basis. Students finally got one day outside for recess Monday as temperatures rose a bit. But Alex Lewin-Zwerdling, a parent of a fourth grader at Lafayette and one of the leaders of the push for outdoor recess, says she still fears the administration hasn’t fully come around to their side of things.
“We also expect more and better communication as to why and when recess will be held indoors, especially when it deviates from other public schools in D.C.,” she says.
It could be tempting to dismiss these complaints as mere meddling from nosy, overprivileged parents—LL has certainly covered his fair share of such disputes in his time in local journalism. What sets the situation in Lafayette apart from other, more pedestrian squabbles is the role the city government has played in screwing things up.
Several Lafayette parents suspect that Prall has concerns about the apparently slippery surfaces at the school’s new playground and might be a motivating factor for her decision to keep the elementary school kids inside for recess. Some students have slipped and fallen on the blacktop and on the spongy material under playground equipment since the start of the new school year, the parents tell LL.
The puzzling part is that the playground just reopened this past fall after a full rehab from D.C.’s Department of General Services. The city spent $50,000 on remodeling the school’s grounds (not to mention the $79 million modernization project DGS recently wrapped up for Lafayette as a whole) last year, so parents assumed the playground would be outfitted with the best materials for keeping kids safe, much less on their feet. Instead, perhaps the opposite has happened—several parents have spotted DGS workers on-site testing the surfaces over the past week or so, presumably at Prall’s request.
After keeping tight-lipped on the subject for a several weeks, Prall finally acknowledged in a Jan. 10 letter to Lafayette parents that she has asked DGS to evaluate the playground’s “asphalt play surface,” noting that she’s “raised concerns regarding the area being slippery or slick and posing a fall hazard for our school community.”
“Recently, DGS conducted independent slip testing and confirmed that the product was installed correctly,” Prall wrote in the letter to parents. “However, they understand our concerns and will work with us over the coming months to mitigate the issue. Lafayette administration and representatives from the DCPS facilities team will meet with DGS next week to begin exploring possible options.”
A DC Public Schools spokesperson declined to comment on the matter further, and instead referred LL to Prall’s letter.
The playground at Lafayette Elementary School in Chevy Chase. Credit: Lafayette parents. Credit: Lafayette parents
Lewin-Zwerdling says that a group of parents spent the weekend shoveling snow from around the playground to help make outdoor recess more likely in the coming days. They’ve also offered to bring towels and wipe down the equipment each day if the administration is really so concerned about kids slipping, she says.
“If it remains too slippery to use, it is our assumption that Lafayette can and will utilize other playground or field spaces and continue to prioritize their work with DGS to make the playgrounds usable,” Lewin-Zwerdling adds, noting that the school frequently moved outdoor activities to the nearby Lafayette-Pointer Park and other adjacent fields when the playground was under construction earlier last year.
It’s unclear how often or how many kids have slipped on the new playground, and parents who have spoken to LL don’t have a precise number. But, fundamentally, some parents wonder whether the conditions on the playground are even worth fretting over as much as Prall has in recent weeks.
“Kids fall all the time, kids go to the nurse all the time,” says Avra Siegel, the mother of a second grader at the school and another outdoor recess proponent. “There’s just an element here of risk aversion.”
Siegel’s point cuts to the heart of much of this dispute. Many Lafayette parents feel that Prall, who just took over as principal ahead of the current school year, is being overly cautious. This is Prall’s first time leading a school—she previously spent several years as an assistant principal at Hyde-Addison Elementary School in Georgetown—and some skeptical parents wonder whether that experience has informed her decision-making. Some parents tell LL that they wouldn’t be all that troubled to hear that their kid scraped a knee at recess every once in a while if it means they get time outside; others might be less tolerant and could be willing to make a stink about even minor injuries.
“Change is very hard, and I think we’re all just working through our first year with this, with the new principal,” says Karrenthya Simmons, the mother of a kindergartner at Lafayette who was also just elected as the neighborhood’s advisory neighborhood commissioner. “People may feel that the principal follows the rules too hard, but I see her perspective too. … It’s tough on both sides.”
At the very least, Simmons hopes Prall convenes some sort of community meeting about the lack of outdoor recess, just so the entire neighborhood can feel it’s being heard. But for last week’s meeting with a small group of organizers, most of Prall’s communications with the school community have been confined to emailed letters (including one that landed in inboxes on the Friday before the winter holiday break), which has not served to build much trust among disgruntled parents.
Prall has also started claiming that she’s adhering to a DCPS policy that prohibits outdoor recess when the “feels like” temperatures fall below 32 degrees, but Lewin-Zwerdling and other organizers haven’t been able to find any evidence that such a policy exists. They’re hoping that Prall will also address this issue in some sort of broader forum.
Otherwise, all that parents can do is wait and hope that this pressure campaign changes minds within the school administration. They’re not sure what to expect out of DGS’ work on the playground, considering its less-than-stellar reputation when it comes to school renovations in general, but they hope it makes some difference. The agency declined to comment.
There are plenty more cold days in the forecast, and for their own sanity, many parents say they simply can’t let this go.
“Play and recess is a primary part of school that is necessary,” Siegel says. “It’s not ancillary, and it’s not optional.”