Group Aims to Revamp Playgrounds

Since its creation in 2001, the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance has been advocating for the asphalt playgrounds at the city’s elementary schools to be put to smarter and healthier use. The Alliance’s efforts shifted into high gear in 2006, when money secured through two bond measures allowed the formerly all-volunteer group to hire a few permanent staff members. Now, it is on the fast track to realize its dream of transforming ordinary, black-top schoolyards into ecologically-rich outdoor learning environments.

For some of the 45 schools on the Alliance’s preliminary to do list, that has meant replacing some of the concrete with working gardens or water elements such as ponds. In other cases, it has meant installing solar panels or play structures made of environmentally sound materials. Whatever the final plan, which is site-specific and decided upon by teachers, administrators, students and parents, Alliance Executive Director Arden Bucklin-Sporer says the goal is help establish a connection between kids and the environment.

And we want to create a richer environment for the kids to learn in, adds Bucklin-Sporer, who says that studies have demonstrated a clear connection between greener schoolyards and improved grades.

Principals have also noticed that students play much gentler. There are fewer accidents and injuries on the playground, and bullying pretty much stops. It’s astonishing. A greener schoolyard really changes everything.

Helping a school community to decide which green features are best suited to its students, and working with bond managers to help each school secure its share of the $7 million set aside for the grey to green schoolyard makeovers, are only parts of the Alliance’s job. The organization also helps schools devise ways to raise additional money for schoolyard greening—the $150,000 allotted to each school is usually just enough to get the ball rolling—and then works with teachers to help them integrate the new green space into their existing curriculum.

We don’t just install and then walk away, Bucklin-Sporer explains. We want the teachers to think of it as an outdoor classroom, so we help them begin that process. It’s usually easy to get the teachers onboard. They see how enthusiastically their students respond to the natural space and how excited the kids are to learn, and they, in turn, get excited themselves. Our hope is that, by doing this, we can develop a community of teachers who are interested in using the outdoor world as a departure point for teaching.

To date, seven projects have been completed. Another ten are currently underway. The goal is to complete all forty-five within the next ten years.

If we want to help kids establish some kind of a bond with the natural environment, then we need to start when they’re young, says Bucklin-Sporer. We may live in an urban environment, but there’s still nature happening all around us. And inspiring these kids to take an interest in nature is really as easy as opening their eyes to that.