By RUTH FINCH and MELISSA NIX

Spring is here and Hugh Mercer Elementary School Principal Marjorie Tankersley, just couldn't let that fact go unacknowledged one day last month.

"It was just a gorgeous day and the kids were well-behaved and they had been working hard, so I said that everybody gets an extra five minutes of recess," Tankersley said. "Nobody turned me down."

Tankersley's attitude toward recess might be typical for the Fredericksburg area, and even Virginia. But the National Parent-Teacher Association worries that it goes against a nationwide trend.

A PTA poll found that while most parents and teachers believe daily recess is essential in elementary schools, 40 percent of school districts nationwide had eliminated or were considering eliminating recess from the school day.

The most common reasons, according to the PTA: the increased focus on academic achievement for even the youngest students and a budget too tight to pay for playground monitors or other recess necessities.

In Virginia, state law requires recess to be part of the elementary school day. And Virginia PTA spokesman Denise Bowman-Scott said that she knows of no school division in Virginia where recess is a hot-button topic at this time.

But that hasn't always been the case. Bowman-Scott said that she faced the issue at her own school in Newport News several years ago when the Standards of Learning went into effect.

"They needed to crowbar remediation into the school day," Bowman-Scott said. "The problem here was, because of buses, they couldn't lengthen the school day to accommodate the new mandates, so they were looking at what to give up."

Parents "raised Cain," Bowman-Scott said, and recess was saved.

Schools in Fredericksburg face similar academic pressures.

Take Berkeley Elementary in Spotsylvania County.

It was in academic warning with the state for not meeting its No Child Left Behind goals two years in a row. Nevertheless Principal Catherine Thomas wouldn't budge on recess.

"Even when we found ourselves in this situation, we wanted to honor and recognize that children are children," she said.

And recess isn't just for the students' benefit, educators say. A few minutes outside can make instructional time inside more powerful.

"The time you sacrifice for recess is more than made up for with more focused kids when they return from recess," Tankersley said.