Playing Smart changelabsolutions.org | kaboom.org 21 report written in 1995 – continues to guide our work. There are no hard-copy versions around anymore, but I have a scanned version, and I hold onto it like the Bible.” The task force report came about in the early 1990s when the Boston Globe Foundation wanted to award grants to community groups to improve the city’s environment. Its executive director, Suzanne Maas, established the Urban Land Use Task Force to gather input from private and public health, housing, and community organizing groups, along with school administrators, community members, environmental advocates, health professionals, and other funders. Schoolyards quickly surfaced as one of the group’s five top priorities. The local philanthropy community also got involved, spearheaded by the Boston-based The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI). With private foundation and individual funding sources, constituent support, and organizational backing, the Boston GreenSpace Alliance (a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the city’s parks and open spaces) reached out to Mayor Thomas Menino in 1994 and asked him to use his political clout to further their cause. The groups decided to establish the Boston Schoolyard Initiative (BSI), which would work directly with schools to design and complete projects. It would be supported by a private entity, the Boston Schoolyard Funders Collaborative (BSFC). BSI launched in 1995 as part of a five-year initiative. The mayor committed $10 million in city funds over five years to the initiative. From the beginning, BSI envisioned these playgrounds as both play and educational spaces. “Their proximity to schools cries out for a higher degree of interactivity, and they offer us the opportunity to combine recreation, creative play, and academic learning,” BSI notes in its literature. The features of each space are colorful, interactive, and unique to that particular community. All use engaging focal points geared toward both students and local residents. Some spaces may feature brightly colored artwork. In some schools children elect to have maps of the globe painted on the asphalt. Each of the redesigned playgrounds includes built structures and play equipment. Some include natural elements like boulders, trees, grass, and other plants. Features in the schoolyards are integrated into the curriculum. Tracks around the school offer math teachers the opportunity to teach students about circumference. Timing children as they run around the track can teach students how to calculate miles per hour. Every three years, the groups meet to select which schools will receive new schoolyards, and how much money each group will contribute. A memo then goes to the mayor’s office for his approval, but the working group makes the choices and then moves forward with the plans.
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