ELORA – A play structure at Elora Public School has recently been removed after being deemed unsafe, leaving the onus on the school to raise the funds for a new one.
In an email, Upper Grand District School Board spokesperson Heather Loney explained “all school outdoor playground equipment is inspected on an annual basis to ensure the equipment meets safety standards.
“The playground at Elora PS was shut down as it did not meet the annual safety standards of the board’s safety inspection contractor,” she added.
“The equipment required many repairs and additionally the playground was at the end of its recommended life expectancy provided by the manufacturer.”
The school’s principal Curt McQueen said following the inspections, the school was told the necessary repairs were estimated at a minimum of $18,000.
“And the things that needed repair … its material that’s not even used anymore,” he explained. “Just a lot of broken welds, things like that.”
McQueen said although the structure looked fine from afar, it received a failing grade on the last two annual inspections.
With the structure now out of commission, McQueen said it was a battle of deciding whether the school had the funds to repair the near 30-year-old structure and if it was even repairable.
“It was pretty clear that it didn’t make sense to try and fix something that’s not even the model or the styles that they build now,” he explained.
“So then we’re going to the issue of if it’s a safety concern and shouldn’t be used, and there’s nothing we can do about it, then the sooner we can get rid of it and on to our next steps,” he added.
“And we’re not putting ourselves in a position where we have an unsafe structure on school grounds.”
He noted the students haven’t used the structure since fall 2019.
School play structures are typically closed November through to March, he explained, and with the pandemic hitting in March 2020, combined with the failing inspections thereafter, the structure was permanently closed.
The previous structure hadn’t been in use since 2019. Submitted photo
As outlined in the board’s Policy 307 Outdoor Play Spaces, now that the structure has been removed, the responsibility is on the school to come up with the funds for a new one.
Under the policy, “all schools and their school councils are responsible for providing the funds to purchase, maintain and repair outdoor playground equipment.”
“So we’re just at that stage now in terms of what to do,” McQueen explained. “Whether we even replace it with something similar, then again, as a school community we need to look at the cost involved.”
To get something similar to the previous structure, McQueen estimated the costs to be upwards of $30,000, ranging closer to the $50,000 mark.
He said the school is now looking at what will be the best use of the funds that can also service students at each grade level.
“From a community perspective, it’s great to have this here and for families to come and go outside of school hours and use it,” he said. “But the funds need to come from the school, so we want to make it really purposeful.”
Another important piece, McQueen explained, is taking into account accessibility.
“What we had here was not accessible whatsoever,” he said. “If a child was in a wheelchair, there’s no way they could even get up because of what the surfacing was and what the boundary was.
“So that’s another consideration when we look at what we want to build towards is accessibility,” he added. “Particularly for our school with our life skills program, we often have kids who have mobility issues or wheelchairs, so that’s another consideration.”
Part of the next steps, he explained, will be looking at how the students play and what they like to do, while capitalizing and building on the existing elements of the school yard.
Between gathering the funds and getting the new structure built, McQueen said it’s going to take some time, noting it could take three to five years.
“In terms of anything major happening over the next year, we don’t have that in the works because we haven’t drawn up the plan,” McQueen said.
“It’s tough for people to wait to have a solitary structure, [but] it’s going to take some time, unless you have some significant donations,” he explained.
“Our hope is to do little things, kind of one piece at a time, around the yard to start to add to it with elements that aren’t at an unmanageable cost.”
McQueen said the school is hoping to have at least one small structure before students return in the fall – a gaga ball pit geared towards the Grade 7 and 8 students.
“If we can spread the opportunities for play among the age groups, that’s ideal,” he said.
The next step will be meeting with staff and the school’s parent committee to start preparing ideas before moving forward with pricing and timelines.
