NORTH HOLLYWOOD : Special Gym Set Donated to School

Giovanni Santos doesn’t have to stay in his walker during recess anymore.

A special play set for physically challenged children has freed Giovanni, 5, and his preschool classmates at Burbank Boulevard Elementary School in North Hollywood from the doldrums of watching other kids play around outside while they are confined to wheelchairs or walkers.

“It gives them independence,” said Cheryl Munster, who teaches the special education class with Arlene Sega. “Activities like this generate all kind of language and social interaction.”

Before the $10,000 play set was donated by the Help Youth Foundation--a coalition of business leaders in the San Fernando Valley--the 15 students in the class were limited to playing outside with toys from the class or equipment their teachers said was inadequate.

“We didn’t have much outside,” said Munster, whose pupils are 3 to 5 years old. “We had some bikes but they aren’t appropriate for all the kids.”

The new gym set is blue and yellow, with three slides, a captain’s wheel and other toys. It has special wide stairs that begin at wheelchair height so children can crawl out of their chairs and pull themselves up to play. Other stairs are specially made for children who can use their legs better than their arms.

With the play set, the children--who have illnesses or disabilities ranging from spina bifida to diabetes--can climb and slide as hard as other kids. Rubber matting below the play set adds a protective layer.

Giovanni, who has cerebral palsy, demonstrated his play skills Thursday by abandoning his walker at the play set.

Slowly, the boy inched his way up the stairs until he reached one of the three slides. Grabbing a bar above the slide, he swung down and slid gleefully into the waiting arms of Munster.

“Can I go again?” he asked with a sheepish grin.

To Sega, such smiles reveal how the play set has touched these children in ways that cannot be expressed with words.

“Each smile says a thousand words,” she said.