A Green Oasis at School
by Sonam Velani How it’s Going:
How it Started:
P.S. 213’s transformation is a model for greening playgrounds nationwide. Image courtesy of The Trust for Public Land.
Third-graders at P.S. 213 in East New York, Brooklyn have fewer skinned knees these days! It’s because the elementary school’s hard asphalt playground has been transformed into a green oasis with gardens, trees, an outdoor classroom, a gazebo, open play areas, and a multitude of child-friendly features.
In addition to promising fun times, the playground can soak up an inch of water each time it rains, preventing up to 500,000 gallons of stormwater from entering New York’s combined sewer system each year. It also reduces the amount of runoff emptying into the nearby Fresh Creek Nature Preserve, which historically has had frequent overflows that flood local streets and basement apartments home to new immigrants.
Thanks to a unique partnership between The Trust for Public Land (TPL), the NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and the NYC Department of Education (DOE), P.S. 213 is the 200th playground to be redesigned into a haven for kids and neighbors alike. The NYC public school system is the largest in the country, serving over 1.1 million students who are disproportionately low-income with little access to close-to-home parks. The new playgrounds become vibrant community hubs, and TPL has put a green schoolyard within a 10-minute walk of more than four million New Yorkers over the past 20 years.
In the mid-20th century, asphalt-paved roads, parks, and playgrounds became a quintessential part of the American landscape. Asphalt, made up of aggregate petroleum products, absorbs and emits heat throughout the day – a growing concern in NYC, where the average temperatures are increasing. Yet, 36% of the nation’s public school students go to school in a heat island, where temperatures are at least 1.25F warmer on average than the surrounding town or city. Black and Hispanic students lose the most learning because of hot school days, and heat-absorbing asphalt that compounds throughout the day is part of the problem. Nationwide, over 100 million people don’t have access to a quality park within a 10-minute walk of home. In green schoolyards, “it’s amazing when kids really notice how much cooler it is on a hot day,” says Mary Alice Lee, Director of the New York City branch of TPL.
In 2010, DEP announced the $2.4 billion Green Infrastructure Program to reduce the use of asphalt, use greenery to absorb rainfall, and improve the city’s water quality. Each new playground costs $1 million per acre and is designed with the school’s students and local community, and green features range from green roofs on storage sheds, to rain gardens and rain barrels, to artificial turf fields with a gravel base that allows stormwater to pass through and be absorbed into the ground. Similar programs across the country are spearheaded by UndauntedK12 in Boston, Space to Grow in Chicago, and the Garden School Foundation in Los Angeles.
Garden School Foundation outdoor learning curriculum in action.
Research shows that outdoor recreation and access to green spaces greatly benefits children’s development and health. Students also learn about plant life in the process, and are being called on to water and weed the gardens. “These students typically live in apartments that have no backyard,” said Lee. “With these gardens, they are learning to dig and plant. It’s good for them to see where strawberries really come from!”
by Sonam Velani