An elementary school without a playground is missing more than swings, slides and ladders. It’s missing fun, exercise and all the little things children learn when they play.
When aging school playgrounds start to deteriorate, children watch sadly as their equipment is taken away bit by bit for safety reasons.
When it’s time to replace the playground, it is parents and communities who have to find the money to tear down the old and build the new. For decades, parents have organized and raised the $80,000 to $100,000 that is often needed for these projects.
The B.C. government has finally decided that this situation is unfair and wants to create a fund to cover playground costs. It’s a welcome idea that is long overdue, but Education Minister Rob Fleming and his staff have to figure out how to pay for it.
The government has many items on its wish list, and the budget surplus from the past fiscal year must be used to pay down the provincial debt. Where will the playground money come from?
It certainly won’t come from fun fairs, coupon books, bake sales, car washes and the other time-consuming strategies on which parent groups have laboured for so many years. The constant exhaustion of fundraising makes it harder to recruit people to serve on parent advisory committees. Adults and children have watched in frustration as their fundraising totals inched toward their distant goals.
Parents and students at Victoria West Elementary School, for instance, have worked for three years and are still $18,000 short of their $50,000 goal. Some students have graduated from the school without ever seeing their hard work turn into new equipment.
The parents must pay not only for the equipment, but also for the installation, which is done by school board crews or by contractors if time is tight and the board workers are busy with other jobs.
That money is raised from residents who already pay taxes to support their schools and who wonder, while reaching into their pockets for a good cause, why they have to shell out more of their after-tax dollars.
Of course, in some neighbourhoods, those hands reach into deeper pockets. Rich areas have much less trouble coming up with the cash, and fundraising is more of a romp than a slog. They can often draw on people who have experience in this sort of thing.
But in our public schools, the quality of the equipment is not supposed to be determined by the wealth of the neighbours and parents.
A provincial fund would take that factor out of the equation and create a more equitable distribution of playgrounds.
The previous B.C. Liberal government put $8 million into such a fund over two years, but playground money hasn’t been available for about five years, Fleming said. He hopes to “relieve parents of the heavy burden” of raising money for something that should be seen as part of children’s education.
“It will either be a grant or allocation to the school district to internally make their own grants,” he said.
If the government can find a way to restore that funding without breaking the bank, it would take an unfair burden off parents and children across the province.
