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By Ray M. Wong
November 23, 2010 (Lakeside) -- Winter Gardens Elementary in Lakeside is a small, often overlooked Title 1 school comprised mostly of economically disadvantaged children. Sixty-three percent of the students qualify for a free or reduced lunch. Some of the kids have never been to a show or the beach. The school has only one administrator, Denise Goulart, who splits her time as the Vice Principal and also teaches second grade.
Goulart bemoans the fact that many of the students at her school are used to receiving second-hand items. This is even true in building structures. Another school in the Lakeside Union School District, Lakeview Elementary, is undergoing a construction project that adds a modern multipurpose room to the campus, so Winter Gardens gets their old one. It’s no wonder this little school that numbers less than 200 students at times seems like a younger sibling in an impoverished family.
This Christmas season, that’s about to change. On December 7th, Winter Gardens is going to build a 5000-square-foot playground with the assistance of a national nonprofit called KaBOOM! The nonprofit helps communities by assembling playgrounds throughout the nation so that children can have a safe place to have fun. KaBOOM! brings corporate sponsors, building contractors, parents, community members and volunteers together to fashion elaborate play areas for children to enjoy.
Winter Gardens has signed up 126 volunteers and 16 construction supervisors called “build captains” to tackle the five-hour project. In that timeframe, the crew will erect a playground, water tables, sand play areas with fencing around the new structures, a sensory garden to educate children about the textures, tastes, feel, touch and smell of working in a garden and a much-needed amphitheater with a mini-stage for school plays and children’s programs. Cost to the school -- $7500. Goulart estimates it would take $75K to $150K to fund this type of project without the help of KaBOOM! and the corporate sponsors and volunteers.
The project has been on a tight and fast-paced time schedule. At the beginning of the school year, a school district social worker named Nancy Fink mentioned Winter Gardens as a candidate for a playground project to KaBOOM! Goulart drafted a thirty-page application to detail how the playground would benefit the school and community. She wrote the proposal in a 72-hour period to meet the application deadline in early September. In mid October, KaBOOM! approved her application. Members of the school board and the school superintendent, Dr. Steve Halfaker, advocated for the project, and the head of maintenance for the school district, Todd Owens, made the proposed playground a priority so that it could come together.
Winter Gardens’ students have been involved. The children designed and drew their dream playgrounds. From these drawings, school staff, parents, sponsors and KaBOOM! representatives matched the children’s ideas to playground equipment available through a contracted supplier called Playworld Systems.
School staff and the PTA have been hard at work contacting corporate sponsors to provide food and drinks for the project participants on December 7th. There will be two prep days where the build captains will ready materials and conduct an orientation to prepare volunteers for the work ahead.
Goulart is grateful for KaBOOM’s help. “KaBOOM! has been meeting with me and the stakeholders on conference calls on a weekly basis. They’ve been guiding my hand in this entire process, making it very easy for me to bring this to my campus,” she conveyed. “They truly have this down to a science.”
Goulart sees many benefits to the project. “We’re a small school. We’re not well known. KaBOOM! has helped us get the word out that we exist here. Having a project like this has opened this school up to the entire community. That’s going to help our school grow. We have a lot of combination classes. By having growth in our school, it will help eliminate some of those combination classes so they will be straight grades,” she said.
She also sees another benefit. “Many of the students in my second grade class have never been to the beach. They’ve never been to a show. They’ve never gone to Disneyland. They don’t have a lot of new things in their lives,” Goulart related. “This is going to be a life-changing event for many of these students.”
Breanna Bailey is the Winter Gardens PTA membership chair. She has a fourth grader named Vanessa and a first grader named Ryan at the school. Her children are looking forward to the playground. “They are so excited. They see the pictures of what it’s going to be like. All the kids got to draw a picture of their dream playground, and it was really exciting to see. I think they all wish it would be (there) now,” she said.
She also appreciates the help from KaBOOM! “I think it’s an amazing thing they do for kids. Our kids would never be able to get something like this, ever. I think it’s absolutely amazing that companies will donate to KaBOOM! It’s a very selfless act,” she said. “I think it’s really cool.”
For info about Winter Gardens Elementary, go to http://www.lsusd.net/wg/site/default.asp
For info about KaBOOM!, go to www.kaboom.org.
Ray M. Wong is a freelance writer in El Cajon. He specializes in articles about people who make a difference in their communities. Contact him by e-mail at ray@raywong.info or through his website www.raywong.info.
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