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Students’ Drawings Inspire Plans for New Playground at Forest Oak Elementary
Parents, Faculty and Community Leaders Combine Efforts to Build a Safer, Wheelchair-Accessible Playground
When members of a committee to replace the playground at Forest Oak Elementary needed inspiration for their task, they sought experts in the field. Answering the call, with direction from their art teacher Jody Maddox, were over a hundred school children equipped with pencils, crayons, and vivid imaginations. On to reams of blank paper, the children sketched the playgrounds of their dreams.
“It has swings, and [it] had a curly slide, and a lookout tower,” said fourth-grader Emily Yeatman. Emily’s sister, Olivia, a first-grader, put lots of monkey bars, swings and stepstools in her fantasy park. “My idea was to have a rock wall on it, and maybe a teepee that you could play in,” said Dylan Rees, a third-grader. “I did have a tree house, and, oh, a trampoline!” In just three months, Dylan and the Yeatman girls may see some of their ideas come to life.
Volunteers from the school community, the neighboring Western Family YMCA and the Midway Little League are working on a plan to raze Forest Oak’s 20-year-old playground and replace it this May. The wood of the existing playground, known as Kidstown, has begun to splinter, posing a safety hazard. Support beams are bowing, metal fasteners are rusting, and the paint is flaking. “This playground has really outlived its life,” said Jodie Piccio, a Forest Oak parent and co-chair of the playground committee.
Instead of just one playground, the committee hopes to build two state-of-the-art play structures that will be accessible to children with disabilities. The second, smaller structure for younger children will be on the northwest corner of the school, close to the kindergarten classrooms. The total project is expected to cost as much as $300,000 – of which $20,000 has already been raised.
Forest Oak Principal Diane Dambach said the district maintenance department decided replacing Kidstown would be more cost effective than repairing it, especially since there are new products that are more eco-friendly and up to date with playground safety codes.
The playground committee is inviting the community to come see the plan and contribute ideas. All are welcome to comment on the working plan at two meetings to be held at Forest Oak on Jan. 25 and Feb. 4 at 4:30 p.m. “Everyone’s ideas will be considered as the committee and selected vendor make final design decisions,” Dambach said. “This project has definitely been a team effort, which is always a goal at Forest Oak.”
The committee used several of the children’s ideas when drafting the plan. “The biggest thing they [the children] wanted was a castle,” Piccio said. Students also dreamed up a panther motif in honor of the school mascot. The children will also be responsible for naming the playground when it is complete. Preliminary designs for the larger playground include:
- Eight slides
- Six standard swings and two ADA-compliant swings
- Coverings to shade children from the sun
- An open design so teachers can survey the entire playground from one spot
- A poured-rubber ground covering to make it safer and wheelchair accessible
Usage of the Forest Oak playground includes far more than the roughly 500 students enrolled at the school. Students from the Meadowood Program for children with special needs share the playground, although their use is limited because Kidstown is not wheelchair accessible.
“I really think that we need to have a safe place for all kids – the regular ed. kids, the special kids,” said Forest Oak interventionist Jenna Lynam. Lynam is the team captain for the playground fundraising committee. “Everybody needs to be able to access a safe playground. Too many kids are inside playing video games.” The playground is open to the community after school hours and is often used by children involved with Midway Little League. The Western Family YMCA uses it for before and after care programs, as well as summer camps. In all, Piccio estimates nearly 6,000 children visit the playground each year.
In part because so many YMCA programs use the playground, the Western Family YMCA has joined the effort to get a new structure built, said Terry Mullan, executive director of the branch. Through a nationwide YMCA initiative, called Activate America, the Western Family YMCA has committed to combat the country’s obesity epidemic by encouraging good nutrition and physical activity in the wider community. Helping to get the playground built, Mullan said, will help fulfill that commitment. “We can only do so much by ourselves, so that’s why we partner with the community,” Mullan said.
One feature that Mullan said she is excited to see in the plans for the new playground is the poured-rubber ground covering that promises to make the playground safer. Loose pebbles cover the ground of the current Forest Oak playground. Because so many children have slipped and fallen on the rocks, supervising teachers no longer allow running during recess inside the Kidstown play area. Nine-year-old Emily Yeatman said the no running rule takes some of the fun out of games of hide-and-seek.
“We are really in need of people who can help with fundraisers and people who can go around and get sponsors,” Piccio said. The playground committee is awaiting word on more than a dozen grant applications submitted last fall. Several school fundraisers are planned, beginning with a skating party in February.
“My hope is that Forest Oak students and the community will enjoy our new playground as much as they enjoyed Kidstown,” Dambach said “It is always bittersweet to tear something down or throw something away that was well-used and loved. That being said, the new playground will be safer and more accessible to all students.”
Information on this page maintained by Pati Nash
