SPARK Park gets a second wave of money from philanthropists
Just as the coronavirus drives home the importance of parks and walkable green space, the SPARK Park program has gotten a new infusion of money to create community parks at 15 area schools and upgrade another 15 during the next four years.
The new money is a second phase of funding of $2.5 million each from Houston Endowment and the Kinder Foundation, which gave the same amount in a first round of funding back in 2016 to create 25 new parks and upgrade another five at area schools. The Brown Foundation is contributing an additional $500,000 for this phase, and the Powell Foundation contributed the same amount for the first phase.
Thanks to the program, Franklin Elementary School in the East End now has a proper park. Rose Toro’s mosaic at Franklin includes images of bluebonnets, pecan trees, mockingbirds, monarch butterflies, horned lizards, armadillos and prairie dogs, as well as flags from 11 countries to represent the diversity of the student body. At Horn Elementary School in Alief ISD, art teacher Lydia Tye and her students created the artwork in the school’s green space.
The SPARK Park program was created in 1983 by then City Council member Eleanor Tinsley to improve community and school parks in Houston when studies showed the area needed an additional 5,000 acres of parkland to compare favorably to other large U.S. cities.
Houston has never placed very high in the Trust for Public Land’s annual rankings of cities and parks. In 2016, when the Houston Endowment and Kinder Foundation began addressing “park deserts,” the city ranked 78th in parkland, earning just 41 points, and it held the same ranking in 2020 with 39.9 points.
For comparison, Minne
apolis, where 98 percent of residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park, was No. 1 in both 2016 and 2020, with 86.5 points and 85.3 points respectively.
SPARK creates brand-new parks at schools with bare or undeveloped land and does “re-SPARK” efforts at schools with playgrounds or land in need of significant help. Once they’re finished, they’re considered community parks that everyone can use during nonschool hours.
Since 2016, the initiative, funded primarily by the Houston Endowment and Kinder Foundation, has focused on eliminating “park deserts” that exist in areas where residents are more than a half-mile or a 10-minute walk away from a public park.
In all, SPARK Park has built more than 200 public parks in 17 school districts in the Greater Houston area.
“We get feedback that people perceive the school campus as being a safe place because they send their kids there. In a neighborhood, they are comfortable sending their kids to the playground at the school and going there as a family,” said Kathleen Ownby, executive director of SPARK Park. “For each one of our parks, we give each school a goal of raising at least $5,000, and until this past year, almost every school has done that.”
The Houston EndowmentKinder Foundation donations put an infusion of cash into the SPARK program, but the schools themselves and other municipalities — cities, counties and precincts — pitch in, too. Students also help raise money.
The amount spent on each park varies with size, $117,560 to $386,660.
“We want — whether it’s a penny drive or selling popcorn or collecting (aluminum) cans — each student to feel like they had a hand in paying for the park and feel pride in their school park,” said Ownby.
Art teachers, local artists and students create public art such as murals and tile work at each site as well.
The parks vary by site, but they include playground equipment, walking trails, picnic tables, trees, outdoor classrooms and public art. Each school site also picks its own landscape architect.
Some 15 of the 30 park sites in this new round of funding have been identified. Sites marked for new parks or improvements to existing parks have to be at least 10 years old.
A list of 50 potential projects in “park deserts” was created back in 2016, and they’re choosing this new round of school park sites from that list, Ownby said. Finished parks usually have a dedication with students and community leaders, but the pandemic has changed that.