Organization Commits To Providing Safe Play Spaces For Schoolchildren And Communities

Space to Grow, a partnership between Healthy Schools Campaign and OpenLands, creates safe spaces for school children and the community. Photo provided by Lanette L. Warbington.
Space to Grow, a partnership between Healthy Schools Campaign and OpenLands, creates safe spaces for school children and the community. Photo provided by Lanette L. Warbington.

Organization Commits To Providing Safe Play Spaces For Schoolchildren And Communities

By Tia Carol Jones

Recently, an organization unveiled new playground spaces. The spaces serve a dual purpose, they provide safe places for children to play, while also addressing flooding. Space to Grow is a partnership between Openlands and the Healthy Schools Campaign. Since it began in 2014, Space to Grow has constructed 41 schoolyards across the city.

The Healthy Schools Campaign is a Chicago-based, national nonprofit that aims to ensure students have healthy environments, health services, nutritious food and opportunities for physical activity. Kenneth Varner, Healthy Schools Campaign’s Senior Community Engagement Manager, said that while the organization was working toward bringing recess back to schools, the feedback they received was that there was a lack of outdoor facilities for children to play. The Healthy Schools Campaign then decided to partner with Openlands, whose aim is to address environmental issues throughout the Chicagoland area, to renovate outdoor spaces. Openlands had been creating school gardens since 2006 and expanding into installing green infrastructure at schools.

Varner said that having safe places for schoolchildren to play is an equity issue and that children on the South and West sides, or in disinvested communities, lack access to spaces like the ones being provided by Space to Grow. He said all students should have access to play spaces that are safe. He added that outdoor and physical activity lead to academic performance.

“If we want students to perform academically, we need to be looking at the health of those students and making sure that they have access to physical activity, nutrition education and being able to get outdoors,” Varner said.

For the Space to Grow program, the Healthy Schools Campaign and Openlands has partnered with Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) and the Department of Water Management to fund the schoolyards. Danielle Russell, a Conservation Specialist at Openlands, said that the schools are chosen for the program based on a flood risk analysis and a look at the CPS equity index. From that, schools apply for the program.

Varner said that what makes the Space to Grow program unique is the community design process. Teachers, students, parents, school administration, community members and caregivers provide input on what they envision existing in the schoolyard space and how they would like to use that space.

The schoolyards provide stormwater management and are designed to hold hundreds of gallons of water per rain event, which can reduce flooding onsite. Each playground has a water permeable surface and a turf field, and any new cement or asphalt that is installed is pitched toward a permeable surface. Russell said that while it might look like a regular schoolyard or playground, everything is geared toward capturing the stormwater to reduce flooding.

Currently, there are four schoolyards in the design process for the Space to Grow program. Those schoolyards are set for completion for the 2026-2027 school year. Russell said that the students where the schoolyards have been constructed really love it. She said oftentimes, the schools where the Space to Grow schoolyards are once had an outdated crumbling playground.

“To have such a transformation where kids have so many more things to do in the schoolyard, whether it’s a much more engaging playground structure or being able to play different sports, it can really transform the relationship people have with their outdoor space and each other,” Russell said. She added that the space is now activated in a way it was not before, including creating community cohesion.

For more information about Space to Grow, visit www.spacetogrowchicago.org. For more information about the Healthy Schools Campaign, visit www.healthyschoolscampaign.org. For more information about Openlands, visit www.openlands.org.

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