Bertha Neal Elementary Playground Committee is a growing group of individuals who are involved with our Parent Teacher Association Committee (PTAC) meetings, as well as staff within the school district.  So far our group consist primarily of six people.  We are still in the process of recruiting committee members as well as build day volunteers and sponsors.  Although this committee is freshly formed we are committed to our August 4, 2007 build date for a new playspace.  Since there has not been a playground committee at Bertha Neal Elementary in the recent years, after the suggestion was made in November that we form one, we chose to research what improvements and updates staff and parents would like to see to the playground before implementing any changes.  

One form of research we used was a survey that we distributed to the school’s staff, as well as the parents.  The results of the survey validated some of our concerns; the results are below.

Now that we are a preschool through second grade school with 270 students, we are in need of playground equipment that has 3-8 year old children in mind.  Upon inspection of the current equipment, these concerns were noted;

*cracked plastic slide

*more play surfacing needed

*drainage problem-ground saturates easily, excessive mud puddles after light rains

*more age appropriate equipment needed-much of the equipment is too tall

*a maintenance schedule is needed

*ADA compliancy needed

At the minimum, we need to offer our Preschool and Kindergarten students a safer place to play by adding more age-appropriate equipment.  The children in Preschool and Kindergarten have different developmental needs, which is why the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends separate play areas for them.  The playground committee is also searching for sponsors and/or volunteers for these additional projects:

*Landscaping                                                          *Build date volunteers (Tentative date 8/4/07)
*Concrete walkways (increasing accessibility)    

*Painting/finishing of Pavilion

Not only would a separate preschool/kindergarten playground give the kids a safer place to play, but also it would show the pride we have in our children and our school.  This pride is important in a time when our district has lost several students (over 100 this year) to neighboring districts.  We will also be working on maintenance and landscaping of existing playground.

The Bertha Neal Playground Committee is using the KaBOOM Road Map as our guide; we have successfully completed the Mile One Activity Checklist and are well into Mile Two Activity Checklist.  Our Committee Co-chairs, Jeanette Fureigh and Kim Fiebernitz, are currently working on recruiting our team captains as well as team members, more build day volunteers (about 50 so far) and sponsors. So far we have successfully recruited, Mike Cooney, the school Principal, as our Public Relations (or Media) Captain, Matt Fiebernitz as our Construction Captain, and have some specific individuals in mind to recruit as captains for the remaining teams.  Currently we have worked on different tasks in Fundraising, Public Relations and Volunteer Recruitment due to the fact that we are working with a short project timeline.   Updates will continue to follow our monthly PTAC meetings, in addition to smaller meetings between co-chairs and team captains.