The images of schoolyards at K-12 school districts across the country often consist of playground equipment, some benches and a whole lot of concrete that soaks up sun and makes surface temperatures soar.
The Oakland Unified School District in California knows about all the other financial hurdles that districts around the country must overcome. Classroom needs, air quality concerns and climbing deferred maintenance bills are often higher up the priority food chain than making schoolyards more aesthetically and environmentally pleasing than their concrete-filled predecessors.
But Oakland was also fortunate enough to have partners outside the district who were ready to invest in the future of their schools and students. One of those partners in the state is the Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit organization that calls itself a “Coalition of Park Lovers” on its website.
It’s a relationship that the Oakland district has greatly benefited from. Speaking at the U.S. Green Building Council’s ADAPT and Green School’s Conference in early March, Megan Allegretti, the district’s director of program improvement, says the district has completed 20 schoolyard projects and planted about 475 trees during recent years with the help of the Trust for Public Land organization. This year, the district has plans for six more projects and adding 300 more trees at district properties.
For districts looking to do similar projects, one of the first steps should be to gauge the interest of school leaders and check with area businesses and organizations to find some who are willing to support the cause.
“We had the buy-in (from the school board), but the district worries about the scarcity of resources, so we wanted to see what the best looks like, and double down on that,” Allegretti says.
The district worked with the Trust organization and asked for input from the public and students to help design the spaces. Their ideas included requests like water slides and smoothie bars, and not all requests were honored, but it helped the users create a space that was more appealing to students and the public than a simple concrete space with some jungle-gyms and basketball courts.
The community was so supportive of the plans that for one project, Allegretti says more than 200 volunteers showed up and finished a school yard in three days.
When planning the green schoolyards, districts should consider, “opportunities where students can grow, learn and experience,” moderator and landscape architect Sarka Volejnikova says. The inclusions that facility managers should consider when helping design their spaces include:
As the district continues to add more green schoolyards, leaders are noticing a trend that leads to increased engagement among students and staff, fewer disciplinary issues, more diverse activities including in school and among the public users, better retention of staff and students and of course, cooler spaces.
One of the recurring themes of the education session was the importance of outside funding to pay for the projects. As the presenters alluded to, civic-minded corporations will fund tree-related projects.
Dave Lubach is the executive director of the facilities market and attended the U.S. Green Building Council’s ADAPT and Green Schools Conference in Orlando in early March. Look for more coverage from the conference online and in upcoming issues of Building Operating Management magazine.
