BURBANK : Playground for City, School Is Opened at Last

At first it may seem like an ordinary kindergarten playground with a jungle gym, sandbox and even a tricycle trail, but to students and teachers at Bret Harte Elementary School, it’s a special place.

The new $75,000 asphalt-covered play area is the culmination of five years’ work by the school’s staff, parents and city officials, both to replace the school’s rundown kindergarten playground and to construct the district’s first playground specially built for disabled youngsters.

“One of the things we pride ourselves on is integrating our regular-education students with our special-education students at every opportunity,” said Diane Berger, the school’s principal. “This playground will be used by our 100 kindergartners and our 20 special-education students.”

If building a playground sounds like a simple task, school officials say they had to labor hard and long to get it done.

About five years ago, a penny drive was started among kindergarten pupils, but it raised only $622 after three years. Then, the PTA kicked in $3,000, and community organizations such as the Kiwanis and Rotary clubs contributed, but the total still came to less than $10,000.

Berger said school officials began to think the playground was a pipe dream when they learned it might cost $70,000 to build.

But the project was reinvigorated last year when the Park and Recreation Department proposed using part of the city’s federal Community Development Block Grant funds. Last October, the City Council approved the $75,000 needed on the condition that the new play area remain open as a public park during evenings and weekends.

“It’s a worthwhile project, and thankfully we were able to support it,” said Mary Alvord, the city parks director. “We knew the need was there for quite a while, but it was just a matter of finding a source of funds.”

Last year, Bret Harte became the Burbank Unified School District’s campus for mentally disabled elementary school students. The new playground, which meets the standards of the Americans With Disabilities Act, will help the children with their physical movement and will help them learn to socialize, according to Kimberley Wendt, who teaches disabled children in kindergarten through the eighth grade.