A 6939 New York Assembly · 2025 Regular Session

Provides for daily recess for elementary students

Summary

Requires each school district to ensure that every public school in which school days exceed five hours in duration provides up to thirty minutes of daily recess within the school day for all students in kindergarten through fifth grade and for students in sixth grade who attend an elementary school.

Issues: ✓ Education

Bill status in committee 1 of 4 stages cleared

Introduction

Mar 2025

Committee Review

Floor Vote

Governor

Introduced Mar 18, 2025 Last action May 12, 2026

Maddy AI version diff · 1 comparison

What changed between versions

A6939 → A6939A · 4 edits

MODERATE

This bill expands the number of legislators sponsoring the measure and restructures the text to clarify that recess is a right in addition to lunch and PE. It modifies the specific requirements for recess duration and supervision, and adds a new provision ensuring that the costs of providing this recess are counted as 'instructional expenses' for state funding calculations.

Scope change

The bill's scope of applicability regarding student eligibility remains unchanged (K-6), but the scope of funding eligibility is expanded by explicitly including recess costs in the state aid formula.

REQUIREMENT

Changed the recess requirement from a 'minimum' of thirty minutes to 'up to thirty minutes' and removed the phrase 'free play' in favor of 'self-directed free play'.

Replaced the word 'private' with 'public' in the section requiring districts to provide daily recess.

FISCAL

Added a new section defining 'Instructional expense' to explicitly include the cost of supervising up to thirty minutes of daily recess.

TECHNICAL

Added a new section to the bill text.

Floor votes

How they voted

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Full legislative history

Actions timeline

Total actions

Key actions

Committee

Amendments

May 12, 2026

Lower · Passed

PRINT NUMBER 6939A

lower

May 12, 2026

Lower · Passed

AMEND AND RECOMMIT TO EDUCATION

lower

Jan 7, 2026

Committee

REFERRED TO EDUCATION

lower

Mar 18, 2025

Committee

REFERRED TO EDUCATION

lower

1 primary · 22 co-sponsors