Sad End to Land of Swings and Slides

Remember swings and slides and fun places to play hide-and-seek? Remember them well. Soon, that’s all that will be left of them--memories.

Several months ago a place called “Oz” was torn down at Van Nuys--Sherman Oaks Park. It was a children’s play area filled with wonderful mazes and places to climb. I remember many years that my children enjoyed playing there. But it was torn down because our city could no longer afford to maintain it or police it. “Oz” had become a haven, not for children to play, but for gangs to scribble graffiti, vagrants to use as a toilet and junkies to shoot up.

I’m now active at Sherman Oaks School, a wonderful neighborhood public school with many concerned parents. Our parents association has raised money to replace a worn playground apparatus with a new and better one.

But the one we will be permitted to buy can have no slides and no swings. The school district has told us that they already have too many lawsuits. They’re afraid parents whose children injure themselves on school grounds will sue. Also, teachers’ strikes seems to be yearly events, and schoolyard supervision is one of the first work assignments teachers cease to perform. Because of lack of teacher supervision at times and because the school district is self-insured, the school district has a policy that playground equipment must be antiseptically safe. That means no swings, no slides.

The city and the school district are doing what they’re doing because there are too many people out there eager to sue, reluctant to accept fair responsibility for themselves or their children, because children are a negotiating tool in teachers strikes.

The bureaucracies are making the world safe for our children. But when they’re done, will it be fun to be a child anymore? Goodby, swings. Goodby, slides. Goodby, land of Oz.

BARRY POLLACK

Sherman Oaks