Ask and you shall receive. Two metro Phoenix charter schools did just that, and they are now the proud recipients of brand-new, state-of-the art playgrounds, courtesy of KaBoom!, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit whose vision is to create “a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America.”

Career Success’s Sage Elementary School in Phoenix and Destiny Community School in Mesa became the first two charter schools in Arizona to receive a playground installation and numerous other outdoor improvements valued at $160,000 September 16 [see the October Charter School Monthly, page 1]. The even better news is that KaBoom! is eager to partner with other Arizona charter schools who want to build for their students not just strong bodies but a strong sense of community.

According to Mike Vietti, communications manager for KaBoom! Sage and Destiny were well deserving of the grant.

“In both cases they had outdated equipment that probably should have been removed a long time ago,” Vietti said in a recent telephone interview. The playground at Sage consisted of monkey bars and an old metal slide, equipment termed “dangerous” by school principal Hector Placencia.

That was part of what prompted school librarian Lucinda Montoya to submit an online preliminary application to KaBoom! when she discovered it in the course of searching for grant opportunities for the school. That was about a year ago. Vietti estimates that, once an applicant is chosen, the planning process takes about eight weeks. Included in that timeline is a “Design Day,” where the children involved create artwork that illustrates the type of playground envisioned and the colors they would like to see used, and the actual “Build Day” where volunteers gather to install the playground and other related features.

The Design Day is a key part of the process, according to Vietti.

“We look at things like the kinds of equipment the kids drew, the colors they used while they were drawing their dream playgrounds…. If you’re building a playground for kids you should probably ask the kids what they want,” Vietti said. No two playgrounds built are the same.

For the Sage build, parents, staff, and area businesses partnered with KaBoom! volunteers from all over the country and the Home Depot to make the playground a reality, from parents sorting out screws and spreading mulch to children designing 200 frames to hold project photos to staff putting together equipment and painting a mural to businesses providing food for the volunteers. This kind of community buy-in is a key part of KaBoom!’s grantmaking strategy, according to Vietti.

“The reason for that is that – and our experience in building over 1,700 playgrounds across North America shows this as well –  when a community comes together to build something and not just the people who are going to be using it and not just the parents of kids at the school – but when a community comes together to build something, that community is going to take care of it,” he said. “So our playgrounds often last much longer than other playgrounds simply because the community takes care of them better because they helped actually build them.”

Also a part of the buy-in is having the recipient prepare the land on which the playground is built and contribute a portion of the total dollar amount.

Sage did some fundraising to reach its $8,000 commitment to the project, with its charter school founder Bob Duffy contributing the rest. The school approached area businesses to provide food.

“For KaBoom! I think the $8,000 was more of a good-faith thing” Montoya said. “It’s like, ‘OK, we’re willing to put up all this money and effort. What are you going to do for us?’”

Once the wheels start turning, the process is designed to run like clockwork, with the playground build completed in one day. According to Placencia, it did.

“It still amazes me, the coordination,” Placencia said. “It’s like a military operation because you get the caterers and you get the containers where all the equipment is going to be stored as it arrives on trucks, they arrive on time. The coordinator called me the night before to let me know when he was going to arrive with all the equipment, and then the unloading of the equipment had to be inventoried to make sure they had all the parts, storage of the equipment and then all the bins for recycling had to come in.”

Because of the precision involved in the scheduling, Placencia even considered sleeping at the school the night before.

“When they said “We want to start at 4, 4:30 in the morning I thought about sleeping here [at the school], I thought about sleeping at a hotel. And then I said, ‘You know what, I’m just going to go home and get a nap and get up early and come in.’”

The precision extended to the actual construction. Many of the playground components were precut, with holes drilled earlier, prompting Montoya to liken the process to building furniture from IKEA. One challenge for the volunteers was having to premix all of the concrete by hand because they couldn’t have power tools on the site for safety reasons. So they mixed it all in wheelbarrows.

“There were two lines of people, and these people were mixing concrete,” Montoya recalled. “And like little ants in a line they’d go and they’d dump, and they’d go get another load like an assembly line. And then in the parking lot there were three truckloads of mulch wood chips. When we started it was bigger than this room and almost as tall, and there were two or three guys on top and they’re just chucking things over the side.”

Destiny’s playground project was even larger, including shade structures, benches, planter boxes, and 50 donated trees; in addition to its playground, Sage received benches and planter boxes. Both received leftover hardware and gardening equipment and supplies.

“We want to beautify those play areas, with benches, planters, and community gardens to make them appealing for those overseeing the kids as well,” Vietti said.

Placencia, as well as Destiny principal Nathaniel Washburn, commented on the sense of being overwhelmed by the generosity of strangers who pitched in to help them make their playground dreams a reality.

“You hear of different national organizations doing things and sometimes you’re apprehensive about what they’re going to do,” Placencia said. “But when you really see it, and you read and study what KaBoom! is doing nationally and locally, the concept is really great, and a lot of kids will really benefit from it.”

Placencia continued, “You know, you think about right now, ‘Where do kids hang out? Where is it besides the street and the mall? There is really no place where they can play and where parents can take them on a picnic and be safe.”

For more information on the KaBoom! playground projects and related events, go to www.kaboom.org.