The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Play's the Thing: Students at Challenger School are making good use of the new play structure after having gone without for a year while school officials addressed neighbors' concerns about noise and traffic.

School overcomes challenges by city, neighbors to build a play structure

Challenger students spent an entire year without a playground

By Cecily Barnes

It's 10 a.m. when the first pack of uniformed kids bound frantically toward Challenger School's new play structure, scurry up its steps and whiz down its slides. The children play aggressively and hungrily, perhaps because until this year they've spent recess in an empty play yard.

The shiny new play structure, complete with tunnel slides and monkey bars, was hard-won, permitted only after a long battle with noise-fearing neighbors. Now that the spacious structure is here, it is dearly loved.

"The first day there was a line all the way out here to go down that slide," says Principal David Mounteer, standing about 30 feet back from the play structure. "Now it's calmed down. The kids waited a long time for this."

Four boys race through the tanbark, barrel up the structure and whip down the slide. Breathless and smiling, they do it again, and then again.

Mounteer looks on with satisfaction. Playground equipment is not only good for fun, Mounteer says, it also helps the kids' academics. "The children certainly appear to be more focused this year because they can move around. There is no doubt that the focus of the children increases when they have a chance at recess to release energy," he says.

Last school year, students at Challenger spent recess in an empty, fenced lot with only balls and jump ropes to keep them occupied. When Challenger first moved in to the old Marshall's building on Meridian Avenue, the school took a shortcut through the city's permit process, leaving them with a school but no permits to build a playground.

Developers originally intended to apply for the playground permit before opening, but skipped it due to vocal opposition from neighbors. Instead, they found a loophole in the law that allowed them to open the school without a permit, as long as they did not have a playground.

Once Challenger opened and neighbors realized that traffic and noise problems were not that bad, the school tried again for its permit. Neighbors decided that as long as their concerns were addressed, they would not oppose the permit, which was approved June 10.

The play structure was built over the summer. In one or two weeks, basketball, volleyball and four-square courts will also be installed on the playground, giving children even more play options. Frantic trips up the structure and down the slide show that, for them, it's clearly been a long wait.

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