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Parks & Rec Business
| Community Build More than a playground By Linda Stalvey Some might call it serendipity. Others might call it predestination or fate. And some might even call it divine order. Lorna Green, principal of Roadrunner School in Phoenix, Ariz., calls it amazing. About two years ago, Green’s staff came to her with a request to build a playground at the special needs school. This wasn’t a rebuild, mind you, but a build-it-from-scratch proposal. Green appreciated the need, but was acutely aware of her budget. The playground seemed a far stretch from fiscal reality. Two weeks after receiving her staff’s request, Jennifer Harter, a sophomore at Desert Mountain High School in Scottsdale, Ariz., walked into Green’s office, asking if she could build a playground for the school as a project for her Service Learning class. Green said “yes” and what was born of the Green/Harter collaboration resulted in much more than a physical playground. The project touched hearts, changed lives, and celebrated the beauty of community service. The story of a high school student’s community-build playground is one of fortitude, belief, idealism, growth and community spirit. Not all playground projects are built with these qualities. Sometimes as directors and recreation professionals, we become jaded with contract proposals, politics, cost over-runs and staffing issues. Sometimes we lose the magic inherent in our jobs. Should you find yourself in need of a boost, picture yourself in Jennifer’s shoes and cheer her on. Find the magic in your own projects! Accepting the Challenge Jennifer grew up in the playground business. Her dad, Scott Harter, is the BCI Burke representative in Scottsdale and surrounding territory. While other kids might not give much thought to playgrounds except when playing on them, Jennifer believed every child should have a playground. It’s basic to her, like food, clothes and shelter. This philosophy came into play when her Service Learning teacher challenged students to develop a project that would keep their interest for 50 to 80 hours of community service per semester. While some students might look at the class as an opportunity to get credit for being off the high school campus, Harter took the assignment to heart. Jennifer decided her project would be to build a playground…after all, Dad was readily available to consult! This project was a new one for the Service Learning class. There were no footsteps to follow, no prototype from which to draw. She was on her own. At the time she had no concept of the scope of her project. What she did have was an idea, which was soon elevated to dream status. Where to build the playground was her first decision. Until the space was known, the particulars could not be developed. Jennifer did not want the playground to go just anywhere. She wanted to build the facility in a deserving area. Her affluent school district in Scottsdale was not the place she chose to look. Other volunteer activity had taken Harter to Roadrunner School in the Paradise Valley School District (one of Phoenix’s numerous school districts). Roadrunner School is a public school, K-12, whose student body is entirely special education children. While geographically not too distant from Scottsdale, it is certainly socially and economically in another world. Each child at Roadrunner is on an IEP (Individual Education Plan) and has a diagnosis – emotionally disturbed, schizophrenic, bipolar, OCD, ADD, ADHD – “the alphabet soup of diagnoses,” as Principal Green says. Many are from abusive homes, and some have chemical imbalances. Teachers at Roadrunner teach behavior like other teachers teach math. Good behavior and the good in their students’ behavior are a priority to pattern and recognize. Roadrunner also lacked a playground. Harter found her school and started to visualize play structures on the empty ground. Looking back on her first meeting with Principal Green when she proposed her project, Harter recalls how touched Green was that she would want to provide such a service to Roadrunner. Green in turn said, “Jennifer was a very impressive young lady. She was organized and determined and presented a very professional proposal.” While the timing of the project might be an issue, Green said that it never occurred to her that Jennifer couldn’t fulfill her promise to build the playground. How Much Did You Say It Would Cost? With the location identified, Jennifer turned to Dad for help. How much would a playground cost for a 34-by-38-foot space? When her father told her to plan on $20,000, Jennifer was shocked and knew the normal methods of high school fundraising would not fit the bill. “I didn’t know if I could make it happen,” said Jennifer, “but it made me want to do it even more.” She set her goal for $22,500 by the end of senior year. “I had no idea how to raise that much money, so there was lots of trial and error,” she said. Harter checked out websites for corporate donors such as Target and Home Depot, filed grant applications, and wrote proposals and several letters explaining her project. “I had never been to a meeting before and definitely grew up with this project,” she explains. By the end of her sophomore year, Harter had several rejection letters and no money for her project. “It was discouraging, but I was determined to continue into my junior year. Her first donation of $5,000 came from the Charros Corporation, a group of philanthropists in the Scottsdale area. As the old adage goes, money begets money, and a second donation of $1,500 arrived soon afterward (one of Jennifer’s Christmas presents last year was the $6,500 in her playground account!). A second donation through the Charros Corporation, from an anonymous donor, added $10,000 to the project. Hitting a plateau in giving at $16,500, Jennifer refused to lose faith. Another $1,000 came through a donation to Roadrunner School, which was channeled to the playground project. Jennifer’s classmates at Scottsdale High got behind her and donated $4,000 through Student Government. Another friend offered $500…and all of a sudden she was there with $22,500 by April 2006. Let’s Do It! With the money in hand, Jennifer’s classmates were ready to rock and roll with the project, but Jennifer felt it would not be done right if rushed, and she opted to wait. Juniors were up to their eyeballs in college tests. If she waited, the new school year’s Service Learning classmates would be oriented to the program and perhaps willing to help build. She chose October 7, 2006, as the day to build the Roadrunner playground. Harter recruited her student builders in the standard way – by placing a manila folder for volunteer names on the wall at school. “I had so many volunteers the folder broke,” she recalls. “More than 80 students volunteered to help me build the playground.” The day before, her father and a friend laid out the design, augured the holes for support beams, and got things ready for the construction crew. On construction day all 80-plus volunteers showed up in lime-green t-shirts! Also supporting Jennifer and the project were the vice president of Service Learning, her school principal, her Service Learning teacher and husband, and Lorna Green and teachers from Roadrunner School. It was a hard day of manual labor for the high school students who started work at 8 a.m. They finished installing the playground equipment by noon, but, according to Jennifer, the “killer” part of the project was laying down the wood chips. It took until 3 p.m. for the teens to have all the chips in place. “None of us had ever done anything like that before,” said Harter. The build went phenomenally, she added. “Of the ten community build projects my Dad has been involved in, he said ours was the best,” she enthused. The children of Roadrunner School now had a red, white and blue playground – Jennifer asked the children what colors they wanted – with three slides, including one double slide, a steering wheel, bridge, stair climb and fire pole, all provided by The BCI Burke company (via Scott Harter) at cost, and a $7,000 shade structure was donated by Shade ‘N Net. More Than A Playground With the ribbon-cutting for the Roadrunner School playground on October 9, 2006, one young woman’s dream had become a reality. What is the aftermath? For Lorna Green, it was a matter of not knowing what she was missing until she had it. “It’s a wonderful place for the children to play, and they can practice the skills we are teaching in the classroom in an unstructured, fun area. They have to take turns, move through bumps and falls, and learn social skills.” As for Jennifer Harter, Green can’t say enough. “The high school kids are so supportive of her…she has the admiration and respect of her peers. I never doubted for a minute she would accomplish her goal.” The students at Roadrunner have a playground and are excited about recess now. Jennifer has a world of experience under her belt and the feeling of a job well done. Watching the kids playing on the new playground puts a smile on her face. “Making a difference in someone else’s life makes a difference in your own,” says Harter. “There is no greater feeling.” It has also changed her opinion of community service. “When I first started this class, I thought community service was people in orange jump suits picking up trash.” She’s a peer leader now and also works with children with Down syndrome. “Community service has changed me as a person, material things are not as important as they once were. I will always be involved in some sort of community service,” she adds. Jennifer’s accomplishment in funding and building the Roadrunner School playground has resulted in an abundance of media coverage, a Spirit Award through a local television station and scholarships. She’s a bit overwhelmed by the coverage. “I did this because I wanted to do it, not because I wanted interviews and awards. “Ten years from now I can pass the playground and still see kids playing on it. I had a dream that I was able to make into a reality. With hard work and the support of family, friends and classmates, you can do anything.” Linda Stalvey is a freelance writer and regular contributor to Parks & Rec Busines,s who gave up Washington, D.C., public relations to indulge her passion for parks, environment and outdoor activities in Medina, Ohio. You can reach her via e-mail at lstavley1@verizon.net. |
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