Any child can tell you: playing is serious business. At Rocky River’s Goldwood Primary School, the grown-ups know it too. That’s why a group of parents is undertaking a playground renovation for the school and the whole community is getting behind them.
A few years ago, parents started noticing that the playground at Goldwood, which serves pre-schoolers through second graders, was in need of a little sprucing up. Mom Deb DeCarlo met with Goldwood’s Principal, Carol Rosiak, and posed the question: is the Goldwood playground ready for a facelift?
The principal agreed it was, and a committee was born. Parents Beth McBride, Erin Konet, and Liz Harmath are co-chairs of the Playground Renovation Committee, and in February of 2013, committee representatives presented their idea to the Rocky River Board of Education. “Our plan was just to let them know what we wanted to do and why,” Beth McBride recalls. “We did not expect any district funding. But the board said, ‘we think this is a great idea and we want to partner with you.’ They gave us the first donation towards the project. It was a huge surprise and a huge boost.”
Shortly after that, the group was awarded a generous grant from the Rocky River Education Foundation (RREF), and recently Rotary pitched in too.
“These three generous groups put us in a really good spot as far as building on these donations, and now the grassroots efforts begin.”
The grassroots efforts to raise funds for a new playground involve sending out a brochure to detail the fund drive, complete with donation levels ranging up to naming rights for $20,000. This push is intended to involve the community, and the first online donations have started coming in.
The students themselves are being involved in their new playground, too. T-shirts will be available for purchase to celebrate the infamous Gym Rats basketball game (when Goldwood and Kensington faculty and staff take on middle and high school faculty and staff to raise money for Hoops for Hunger). Children can paint small or large art tiles that will be showcased on a welcome wall in the playground, and a childrens’ triathlon (reading, dancing, and walking) is scheduled for April.
The new playground will incorporate four existing structures (including the much-loved dinosaur!) and add nearly three dozen new play components, including 5 slides and a capacity for more than 110 children. The committee is especially pleased to note that no existing blacktop or green space will be sacrificed for the project.
The playground equipment has already been purchased, and it is spending the rest of the winter in the gym of Beach School. “We were able to buy it at a savings of $35,000 by taking delivery by the end of 2013,” McBride notes.
The ground cover and installation will be paid for in the summer, when the installation is planned. The Playground Renovation Committee is looking towards a completion date in July of 2014 and a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the beginning of the 2014-15 school year.
Why all this dedication towards making sure Rocky River’s primary scholars have a renovated place to play? Because it’s critical to their overall education, says Committee co-chair Beth McBride: “Giving kids the opportunity to have a place to play and burn off energy during the school day is just as important as the basic fundamentals of academics, McBride maintains. “We look at it as an extension of the school building. It’s an outdoor classroom.”
And, with the help of the community, it is about to be a newly vibrant, updated outdoor classroom.