Zanker PTA position statement on primary PE changes at Zanker Elementary School

Zanker PTA strongly believes in the following:

• The school “must provide environment, resources, and structure that will enable each child to be a successful learner”
• The learners are given meaningful and engaging learning experiences to espouse in them a love of learning, and to encourage them to stay in school, thereby increasing enrollment rates and test scores.
• The school must continue to find ways to build on top of proven methods and techniques, to close the achievement gap within the learners.
• Teachers must be given ample time to prepare their lessons.  National PTA’s position statement Teacher Preparation and Staff Development elaborates on this point.
• “Physical education and activity are critical components of a full school curriculum”

The recent change to our school site with respect to primary physical education and the resulting impact to our teachers and learners goes contrary to all the bullet points above.  

Previously, as in years past, a paraprofessional was running PE classes for 50 minutes, twice a week.  During this time, our teachers would then be able to do their prep time.

It turns out that our physical education (PE) classes were being done in violation of the California Education Code (ed code).  The ed code states that a credentialed employee should be teaching or supervising the class.  Because the classified and certificated unions called the district out on this exercise, the district instructed the elementary school sites to remedy the situation with no additional personnel or financial support.

In January 2024, working with the existing personnel available, our principal, after working through different options with her staff, then worked out a solution that involves the primary teachers teaching PE.  With the teachers teaching PE, that eliminated their usual prep time so new time has been carved out.   A paraprofessional will have “lab” time with the students where the teachers prepare lessons/activities for them to do.  A paraprofessional cannot design a lesson for the students so only previously lessons previously taught by the teacher can be given.  In order for the students to have this “lab” time, 100 minutes of their existing teacher instruction time has been taken away.  This is usually the time that teachers can cover new lessons and concepts with the students.

This solution is counterproductive in a number of ways for all parties involved.  

• Impact to Students
  • Loss of 100 minutes per week of credentialed instruction time.  All primary grades’ students (252 students) have and will continue to lose 100 minutes per week of credentialed instruction time. 
    • The most recent iReady data shows that 41% of 1st to 3rd students are below grade level in english language arts (ELA) and 47% of 1st to 3rd grade students are below their grade level in math.  The impact of losing credentialed instruction time at this time, for this age group will not be beneficial to bridging the achievement gap with such a large number of students needing to catch up. Recent iReady data also shows improvements year over year from the learning time lost during Covid so this change will no doubt impact this progress.
  • PE content standards.  Our students should receive standard PE instruction from a credentialed PE teacher.  Our primary teachers are doing their best to learn and provide these students with proper PE instruction but they are not subject matter experts in this area.
• Impact to Teachers
  • PE content preparedness.  Mid-school year, they now have to learn a new content area, PE, in order to effectively conduct these PE times.
  • Doubling prep work.  They now have to prepare content and materials for these lab times, which is supposed to enable them to prepare content for the class.  Effectively, they are preparing materials in order to prepare materials for the classroom, thereby doubling their work.
  • Loss of time to teach new content/lessons.  The lab paraprofessional, by ed code and their contract, cannot teach new topics.  They can only review topics that have already been taught by the teachers.  Therefore, teachers either have to condense their usual curriculum or will not be able to teach planned topics.

Zanker PTA demands that a credentialed PE teacher or a credentialed instructor be put in place in our school until the end of the school year so that the students either continue to receive instruction from their teachers or equitably receive standard instruction from a credentialed instructor.  The teachers, then, wouldn’t have to prep for their prep time since they will either go back to the previous model of having prep time during PE or they wouldn’t have to prepare materials for a credentialed instructor teaching the class. 

We are advocating for every 1st to 3rd grade student and teacher. 

Adopted by the association on March 4, 2024.

– Zanker PTA