Hermosa Valley School has temporarily suspended dodgeball and football during lunch and recess on campus playing fields.
Officials at the school, which serves Hermosa Beach youth in 3rd through 8th grade, say the games will be allowed to recommence Feb. 22, when the children return from President’s Week.
School officials had been eying the change for a while, and there was not a specific incident that inspired the temporary ban, said Principal Kim Taylor.
“What happened was the result of multiple layers of input,” said Valley Principal Kim Taylor. “We spoke to teachers, students, parents, noon-time supervisors.”
Taylor said that the school is awaiting the arrival of new equipment, including “pinnies” lightweight jersey-style tank tops that can be worn by players. When the games return later this month, school officials hope that everyone will have a better sense of appropriate behavior for the games.
“I think they came up with a good solution,” said Jean Crow, whose older son was interviewed by staff and involved in coming up with the compromise policy. “Everything seems like it’s pretty much resolved.”
A recent letter from Valley Assistant Principal Adam Genovese to parents said that football and dodgeball games had “resulted in verbal/physical altercations, exclusion, hurt feelings and overall conflict” and that staff had decided to “remove these games completely.”
Taylor said that there were no plans to ban the games permanently, and that the school’s intent had gotten muddled in the message.
“Obviously our first communication was not very clear,” she said. “We’re doing the best we can to be clear moving forward.”
Some parents and caretakers thought described the school’s plans as misdirected.
“I think it’s kind of silly,” said Marsha McNally, who was picking up her granddaughter at Valley Monday afternoon. “Maybe instead we should be figuring out what’s causing the hurt feelings. Is it supervision, is it needing to learn to be a good sport, learning that not everything is about winning?”
Other said that while they had heard about the new policy, their children had avoided the games.
“It doesn’t really affect my kids,” said parent Laura Witten. “I do know that there wa a lot of competitive bickering, and they tried to stay away from it.”
