With 595 students now packed into Ecole Heather Park elementary, the need for new playground equipment has never been greater.
Rather than trying to raise the money to buy a new adventure playground, the Heather Road parent advisory council went to school board trustees seeking approval to have an existing playground moved from the now-closed Austin Road elementary.
The school board agreed to the move, as it did in 2011 when it approved the shift of an adventure playground from Springwood elementary to Heather Park.
"We had volunteers who went door to door around the Austin Road area and I don't believe we had anyone who was majorly concerned about moving that particular playground to Heather Park, because it still leaves one major playground and several other play structures there," said Sarah Holland, vice-chair of the Heather Park PAC.
"There are still kids who play there [at Austin Road], but there's not a whole school of kids who play there. People want kids to play on [the playgrounds] and the more kids that can play on them, the better it is."
The move will coincide with the installation of a primary school playground this summer at the front of Heather Park. The Austin Road playground will be installed at the back of the school.
In September 2010, Heather Park was reconfigured from a middle school to an elementary school to accommodate students from three closed schools -- Shady Valley, Springwood, and Austin Road.
One month later, the Heather Park parent advisory council conducted a survey of 30 households (19 around Austin Road school and 11 around Springwood) and found 77 per cent of those polled definitely supported the move of one of the playgrounds from each of those schools. Of those opposed or strongly opposed to the move, all three were from the Springwood area. Those residents said their reasons for being against the idea is that kids still come to the schoolyard, even if the school is closed. There were also concerns that losing a playground would result in decreased property values.
The Springwood and Austin Road PACs which originally raised the money to build those playgrounds are now located at Heather Park. The move last year at Springwood did leave one of its existing playgrounds intact.
"We haven't had anyone complain about that [move]," said Holland. "Because there is a fairly major play structure being left at both the closed Springwood and the closed Austin Road."
Previous school closures, particularly at Highland and Meadow elementary schools in the West Bowl area, left those schoolyards without any playground equipment. Liability and safety concerns resulted in the school district removing those structures. Trustee Trish Bella admitted a lesson was learned in those two examples and said the school board will try to ensure any closed schools will keep at least some playground equipment, recognizing kids still live close to those schoolyards.
