School board hears presentation on anti-bullying recess program

The Maricopa Unified School District governing board heard a presentation during Wednesday night’s meeting about a structured, anti-bullying program that could be implemented into some or all of the district’s elementary schools.

Wade Watson, the district’s director of curriculum, made a presentation about Peaceable Playgrounds, a program that structures recess activities to promote healthy relationships between students and cuts down on bullying.

“Some of the highlights of the Peaceable Playgrounds program is that, again, it is a program to structure recess to cut back on aggressive playground behavior, to organize non-competitive games and model and support pro-social behavior,” Watson said.

Earlier in January, the board heard a presentation about a similar program called Playworks, which requires each school have a staff position to facilitate the program. That could cost $30,000 more for each school, Superintendent Steve Chestnut said.

In comparison, Peaceable Playground organizers do not require a new staff position to facilitate the program. Instead, organizers suggest bringing in a trainer for three days at $1,200 a day to train up to 25 staff members or volunteers. Then, one of the newly trained staff members could become a “site trainer” and train any additional staff or volunteers.

The district would also have to pay any travel expenses for the trainer.

The board didn’t take any action on the program. Chestnut said the next step is to ask elementary school principals and PE teachers what program they support and to make a suggestion to the board.

“Our next step is to go back and talk to them more in depth about the differences between Peaceful Playgrounds and Arizona Playworks and come up with their recommendations and their feelings,” Chestnut said.

Board members showed some interest in the program.

“It’s a lot less than the other one,” Board President Torri Anderson said.

Board member Leslie Carlyle-Burnett also said she thought the program sounded like a good one. She asked if schools within the district have a high bullying rate.

“Well that’s a good question,” Chestnut said. “If you have one instance of bullying in a year, then that’s one too many. I think that’s something we work really hard on. Student safety is something that we take very seriously.”

***ADVERTISEMENT***Chestnut said that the district has to be vigilant about cutting down on bullying. There are so many ways kids can bully now, he said, especially with social media.

“It’s that time that’s somewhat unstructured that can be a problem,” he said. “The more that we can structure that time at the elementary level, we think we can get even better student behavior. We can get them to be doing better. That’s the goal.”