The story starts off a bit like an after-school special: some years ago, a precocious 5th grader (as all the fifth graders at that school seem to be) approached the principal with a complaint: the playground was too small, and as a result, kids were running into each other and getting hurt too often. The principal listened, but there was no money in the budget to make improvements.
There was, however, a Small and Simple Grants program funded by the City of Seattle, offering up to $15,000 towards community projects. A parent, Janel London, won the grant to fund the initial investigation and planning and a project was born.
A landscape architect led a series of a meetings with teachers, students and parents to gather ideas and requirements. It turned out that the upper playground area often wasn’t used because it was physically separated from the lower playground area, making it difficult to staff. The tetherball court had been placed in front of the doors that let into the playground area, leading to interrupted games at best, and bonked heads at worst. Overall, the school had the smallest per student footprint in the city.
And so a plan was hatched to create a new design for the playground. One key theme that emerged was the desire to represent the “international” aspect of the John Stanford International School in the new design. The drawing (not the final design) below shows how that has developed: a ramp and tower in the southwestern corner echoes Mayan temple design, a new, more accessible bicycle entrance on the western side will be decorated with African-inspired art, and a Japanese-inspired gate will open to the east.
So how’s it coming along? Kim, one of the parents involved with the project, and the one who was kind provide us with the above information, recently gave us an update:
The original budget for the entire master plan (expanded playgrounds plus entries and rain garden) was $1.3 million last fall. It’s a big number so we are phasing the improvements. Our application for $100,000 city funds was not accepted in June. So we are going to start approaching corporate sponsors to see if how much we can raise over the next year. We plan to construct some improvements, including a new play structure and west entry by next summer. This summer we plan to paint a new soccer court, four square courts and kickball courts as well as move the tether ball courts.
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