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When upper elementary students return to school this September, it will be to a pared down physical education program.
Last year, youngsters in fourth through seventh grades had a half-hour daily with the certified physical education teacher; this year, it will be cut to just two days a week.
The change in the program was discussed during executive session at the July meeting of the Rappahannock School Board. There was no mention of the action during the open portion of the meeting.
“It was a personnel matter - whether to replace an aide, whether to reassign an aide,” said Superintendent David Gangel in an interview this week. “The decision was not to replace an aide, and if the individual wasn’t replaced, certain alterations in curriculum would result.”
He explained that it was his recommendation not to pull an aide from another program to replace the aide for physical education who is not returning this year. “We’re trying to do what we can for reading” and other academic components, he said, stressing that the priority must be given to academics. Asked, if that means the reading lab aide who was assigned to the school office last year will be returned to the reading lab, Dr. Gangel said he is evaluating this and other moves.
But without an aide, he continued, the physical education teacher had an “unrealistic, extraordinarily heavy load,” seeing more than 2,000 children every week. That prompted the decision to cut back physical education for the upper elemen
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