New St-francis playground open for business
While the school year is winding down for the summer across the Eastern Townships, there’s something happening today at St-francis Elementary in Richmond that the whole school community has been building up to for a long time. The fence surrounding the school’s new playground equipment is coming down.
“The main attraction is basically done,” said Mandy Hinds, chairperson of the school’s Parent Participation Organization (PPO). “As of Friday the fences will be down and it will be open for business at recess.”
Hinds said that work has been going on in the play yard for only a few weeks now, although the process of
fundraising and preparing the site dates back to last year. She acknowledged that the play structures have been the main focus of the children’s attention, but pointed out that it was only one of many phases of work in the overhaul of the yard.
“We still have plans to build an outdoor classroom-gazebo type structure,” the PPO chair said, adding that there is also an outdoor basketball court in the plans that should, hopefully, be in place by the end of the summer. After that, she continued, it’s just a matter of “finishing touches” in the form of landscaping and walking paths that might vary depending on what remains of the budget.
Although the fences only come down today, Hinds shared that the St-francis students have had the special opportunity to “test run” the equipment over the last two days. On Tuesday students from kindergarten to grade three got to play while grades four to six tried it out on Wednesday class by class. She said her own daughter came home on Tuesday calling the new playground “awesome.”
Even with more work ahead, the PPO chair said that she has been really impressed by the community support so far.
“We planned to have four installation days, but we had such a great response from our parents and teachers to come and help that we got all of that work done in three,” Hinds said. “In fact, we did way more work in three days than we had anticipated doing in four.”
Similarly, she said that the PPO is now made up of “expert fundraisers” because of the work done to prepare for this project over the last year.
“(The students) have been eagerly awaiting this day.” Hinds said