District 90 applies for PE waiver
The O'Fallon District 90 Board of Education on Tuesday agreed to re-apply for a physical education waiver from the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) for the next two school years.
“Unfortunately, our district is unable to provide the same level of physical education instruction for the five elementary schools within our school district due to the lack of proper facilities,” Superintendent Carrie Hruby said.
This would be the second physical education waiver granted to the school district if approved. The previous waiver recently recently expired and now needs to be renewed, Hruby said.
School districts in Illinois are allowed to get physical education waivers, board president John Wagnon said. Each waiver is two years long.
District 90 is a comprised of 3,500 students and seven of schools.
Currently, the district’s two junior high schools Fulton and Carriel) each offer daily physical education five days a week (48 minute periods; 240 minutes per week) for all sixth, seventh and eighth grade students. In addition, the district provides nine weeks of health education to each sixth, seventh, and eighth grade student.
While Schaefer Elementary and Moye Elementary School, the district’s other three elementary schools (Kampmeyer, LaVerna Evans and Hinchcliffe) have no gymnasium or multipurpose room for daily physical education.
“Each of these schools has a lunchroom facility that is utilized during non-lunch hours for physical education classes,” Hruby stated in a statement that outlined the district’s rationale for re-applying for the physical education waiver.
To solve both the issue of lack of physical education and teacher planning time, the district will provide 40 minutes of physical education instruction per week for our elementary students in grades K-5 for the 2016- 2017 and 2017- 2018 school years, she said.
Hruby said rotating lunches at the smaller elementary schools also allows for the elementary students to cycle through physical education class one time per week.
These PE classes will be taught by a teacher certified physical education teacher, Hruby added.
In addition, each student will continue to have a 30 minute recess each day, she said.
While physical waivers are filed with the Illinois State Board of Education, it’s the General Assembly that approves or denies them in session.
ISBE has said in the past about one third of all Illinois districts use the waiver process, and cited space concerns as the biggest issue for noncompliance.
Before 2008, schools could hold waivers exempting them from various aspects of the state’s physical education requirements for five years.
The Illinois General Assembly changed that in 2007 by passing legislation that restricted waivers to a two year basis, and limited schools to just two, two year renewals after that. Thus, schools are only able to remain exempt for six years.
The six year limit is designed to give schools time to make arrangements to that the requirements can be met.
Many schools, however, have been unable to find a way to meet the required five day course offerings.
Failure of districts to meet P.E. requirements is treated much the same as failure to meet any other state education mandates – the state attempts to work out a solution by placing them in a category called “Recognized Pending Further Review.”
If no solution can be reached, districts are then subject to state board-imposed penalties and their funding could be withheld until changes are made.
Hruby said Tuesday’s decision made by her school board is not a change for her district.
“There was a little misunderstanding that we were eliminating PE in its entirety,” she said. “But that’s not the case.”
Hruby said the district will need to come to some sort of solution in the next four years unless the code changes.
To that end, the school board plans to appoint a special committee to look at this issue.
One solution they might consider is an education fund increase to pay for the additional physical education teachers and bonds to build the additional buildings needed for gymnasiums.
“If they say yes, we build the buildings,” board member Todd Roach said. “If they say no, we ask for another waiver (in two years).”
Board member Mary Baskett said another solution might be if the proposed one cent sales tax were to make it on the November ballot. The issue will be only put in front of voters if districts representing more than 50 percent of the student enrollment within the county approve adding it to the ballot. The added sales tax, by state law, can be used on additions and renovations, security and maintenance, as well as for debt on construction or renovation of buildings.
Area school administrators have emphasized that the penny sales tax could be use to refund bonds or reduce property taxes levied to pay bonds issued for capital purposes such as new facilities, additions and renovations, security, maintenance, architectural planning, durable equipment, fire prevention and life safety, land acquisition, energy efficiency, parking lots, technology infrastructure and roof repairs.
But if the proposed the one cent sales tax were to appear on the November ballot it appears highly unlikely it will pass in St. Clair County.
This story was originally published August 10, 2016 at 5:07 PM with the headline "District 90 applies for PE waiver."