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Superintendent warns new recess law could force schedule changes and millions in extra costs
Summary
The district superintendent told the July 13 board meeting that state guidance on Senate Bill 1481 (40 minutes daily recess for K–5) and OSDE implementation memos could cost the district instructional days and more than $3 million to fix; the district outlined short‑term mitigations for 2026‑27.
Superintendent (Speaker 11) told the Midwest City‑Del City School Board on July 13 that new guidance for Senate Bill 1481 requiring 40 minutes of recess for kindergarten through fifth grade will force the district to change schedules, adjust staffing coverage and absorb added costs.
The superintendent said the district received an accreditation memo on June 10 and a June 19 update from the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) clarifying that for the 2026‑27 school year districts may designate up to 20 of the required 40 minutes as instructional time but must record the remaining 20 minutes as non‑instructional recess. "So as I told you on June 8, this bill requires, 40 minutes of recess per day for students up to grade 5," the superintendent said, and later warned, "With our current elementary schedules, we would be short the equivalent of 7 days of instructional time per the June 19 update." He added that adding days to the calendar based on earlier calculations "would be in excess of $3,000,000." (Superintendent, Speaker 11)
Board members pressed staff for details on how recess differs from the RESET/TBRI approach and asked whether the district had data to show the programmatic impacts. The superintendent and school leaders said recess is not previously excluded from instructional‑time accounting and that the OSDE memo represents new implementation guidance. The superintendent described short‑term mitigations for 2026‑27: moving elementary breakfast earlier, using stipended coverage for bus drop‑off and duty supervision and updating school data trackers to show the effect of adopted curricula on attendance and behavior.
The superintendent said the district has explored scenarios and sought legal and scheduling advice: "We're going to have to start breakfast earlier at elementary, which means we'll have to start breakfast earlier at middle... which also means that we're going to have to let buses drop off a little bit earlier, which means we're going to have to have some teachers on duty and pay stipends for coverage," adding an estimated district cost for that mitigation of roughly $10,000–$20,000 (Superintendent, Speaker 11).
The board discussed whether the legislature or the OSDE would revise the guidance; the superintendent noted the bill author (Max Wolfley) had not answered scheduling intent questions and said legislators who voted for the bill told him they did not expect the current implementation interpretation. Board members agreed to brief principals and communicate proactively with families on social media and district channels.
What's next: staff will continue site‑level scheduling work with principals, track the impact on instructional minutes and report back to the board as the state clarifies long‑term interpretation or statutory fixes.
