Evergreen pitches in for playground upgrade
They got it for the school year, but new playground equipment will add a fun dimension to summer in Evergreen.
A group of Evergreen school trustees, parents, teachers and administrators pitched in last month to install swings and a slide at East Evergreen Elementary and an overhead crawl structure reminiscent of monkey bars at the junior high.
They're bright, attractive, safe and - seen from a child's-eye view - a whole lot of fun.
As a bonus, they're truly a community asset. Community businesses donated just more than $20,000 of the $30,000 project cost.
"The best memory of the whole project had to be when I took my daughter to school on Monday after completing the playground at her school," Tamara Williams said. Williams, chairwoman of the Evergreen School Board, spearheaded the project.
"I rounded the corner to go back to the playground and saw every single student either on the structure or waiting in line for their turn. They were having such fun, and it personally made me so happy for them.
"They deserve it and were so appreciative," Williams said.
The volunteer group responsible for the updates called itself HOPE - Help Out with Playground Equipment.
Williams initiated the project in October after Superintendent Joel Voytoski pledged a share of the money in school building reserves to back up whatever the group could not raise through a soft-solicitation campaign.
She worked with teachers from the elementary and junior high schools, where children in grades five through eight are schooled, and with administrators and the maintenance director to choose age-appropriate play structures for each school.
They opted for a passive fund-raising campaign, asking Evergreen businesses and the larger corporate stores to submit cash or in-kind donations.
Major cash contributions came from Lowe's and Flathead Electric's Roundup for Safety program, with cash and materials coming from many other businesses.
A group of 25 or 30 weekend volunteers got together May 14 and 15 to install the equipment at both schools. A local construction company donated and poured the concrete to set the structures during the first day of the next week. The group returned the next weekend to spread pea gravel and wood chips for cushioning ground cover.
"It was such a team thing, all these people putting it together," Williams said. "You could see the excitement build. All they wanted to do was climb on it like the kids.
"They told me it was so worth it," she said. "They said, 'Twenty years from now, we're going to be driving by there and say, we did that.'"
It's also a feather in their caps, she said, that they pitched in to do this for Evergreen students.
The play structures, in part, replaced 30-year-old monkey bars and dome-shaped climbing cages called "ladybugs." Children are bigger at that age now, Williams said, and often found their arms and legs stuck in tight spots that were built for smaller bodies.
Students involved in the junior high's Fitness Team throughout the summer are bound to use that structure for upper-body strength in particular, she said.
Students at both schools - 220 at the elementary and 190 fifth- and sixth-graders at the junior high - were patient during the week between installation and completion.
And, Williams said, students at both schools equally were delighted with their new equipment.
Diane Anfenson, a kindergarten teacher at East Evergreen School, was one of the many adults who heard their verbal expressions of thanks firsthand.
"At the end of the school year, we went around the room and I said, 'Now that you're in first grade, what was your best part of kindergarten?'" Anfenson said.
"Four or five times, it came up as 'the new equipment,' or 'the double slide,'" she said. "It was not 'recess,' or 'my friends at recess,' or 'playing.' It was the equipment itself."
Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com.