Another school bans tag during recess citing safety concerns
This is getting ridiculous.
Days removed from a stunning decision by a Long Island school district to ban a variety of balls as well as tag and cartwheels from a middle school's recess period, a New Hampshire elementary school has followed suit, banning the traditional game of tag from all recess periods.
Like Port Washington, N.Y.'s Webster Middle School, Charlotte Avenue Elementary School (Nashua, N.H.) officially banned the game of tag. Just as with Webster Middle School, safety was cited as the driving force behind eliminating tag, though school officials insisted that they weren't trying to make children less active when interviewed by the Nashua Telegraph.
"We want them running, we want them jumping and releasing the energy, but just in a safe way," Principal Patricia Beaulieu told the newspaper. "[Tag]] seems innocent enough, however the force with which students 'tag' varies greatly, and this game, in particular, has been banned in many schools in the United States due primarily to concerns about injuries."
Parents have been quick to criticize the explicit ban, though those concerns have fallen on deaf ears to this point. Rather, Beliveau insists that the ban on tag is simply the school finally enforcing a regulation that has long been on the books but has often been overlooked: recess at the school is to be a "no contact" period.
"It always goes back to safety," Beaulieu told the Telegraph. "We spent Monday with the nurse, the counselor, and [physical education teacher Al] Rivard meeting with all grade levels about playground games, just so everybody’s on the same page.
"They're allowed to play soccer … they can do basketball, there’s jump ropes, there's different balls they can play with, different four square games out there. It's really about them being healthy and their well-being."
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