East Cleveland’s Caledonia Elementary School will be transforming its aging blacktop schoolyard into a dynamic space, open to both students and the community.
The revamp is part of the Trust for Public Land’s Community Schoolyards initiative. The makeover includes a basketball court, musical playground instruments, jungle gym, walking trails and an outdoor classroom.
East Cleveland Superintendent and CEO Henry Pettiegrew said he reached out to the trust to bring safe, functional play spaces to students and families in his district.
"This is not just about our kindergarten through second grade building being able to go out for recess," Pettiegrew said. "This is about how we enable an entire community to be able to come together, gather and have a wonderful, fun time in a state of an art experience."
Caledonia is the first school in Ohio to participate in the initiative. The project is expected to be completed by the fall.
The project will provide students with outdoor activities they might not otherwise have access to, Principal Shawna LeSure said.
"Those are opportunities that they don't really get at home or they don't even get within the four walls of the school building," she said. "To open those walls and drop those those boundaries and it's just limitless for them. So, I look forward to seeing there them discover what our new play space has to offer."
LeSure said she is excited to see students and families enjoying the school yard once it’s completed in the fall.
The schoolyards project allows the Trust for Public Land to better connect residents to outdoor parks within a 10-minute walk from their homes.
"Community schoolyards is identified as sort of the secret recipe to help communities create stronger access to green space. We had a number of cities that were like Cleveland [and] pretty solid in their ten-minute walksheds," Trust for Public Land's Ohio State Director Sean Terry said. "But we were constantly looking for solutions that would help us sort of get to that next level."
The trust worked directly with a core group of students to find key features that would benefit students, and it engaged in community surveys to get feedback directly from residents.
Students also learned about the environmental benefits of the project through lessons about how water and heat react to pavement.
"There's small activities around like absorption on grass versus asphalt that is very demonstrative and understandable even for first and second graders," Trust for Public Land Associate Director Kaela Geschke said. "I don't go in the classroom and talk about climate change, but we talk about what it means to be hot and how that might affect you, how it might affect your auntie or your grandma or your grandpa."
The project will cost $1.2 million to complete, funded largely through philanthropic efforts, Terry said.
The trust will lead more community engagement efforts in the spring before breaking ground at the end of the school year. The schoolyard is expected to be completed and open to the public by the fall.
