Planned Site of School Playground Causes Stir

For the past six months, parents and teachers at Norma Harrington Elementary School have held neighborhood dinners and swap meets to raise money for something they say children badly need: new playground equipment.

Now, just as the plastic slides and ladders are set to arrive, they’ve run into tough opposition. Some residents and teachers complain the new equipment would go smack in the middle of one of the community’s most important places: the school’s soccer fields.

Tonight, school trustees will take up the issue, which in recent weeks has escalated into a debate on race and fairness.

The chief critic, second-grade teacher Juan Mora, contends that the equipment would crowd the playground, making soccer games cramped and possibly dangerous. But beyond that, he sees the current plan as an attack on Latinos, even comparing it to Proposition 187 at a recent school board meeting.

“Soccer is an important part of our culture, our community--and this is an anti-soccer move,” Mora said Tuesday. “I think they’re trying to discourage soccer, bottom line. It’s going to affect largely the Hispanic community.”

Principal Ron D’Incau, meanwhile, says he cannot understand how a neighborhood effort to improve a playground has grown so heated. D’Incau, who headed the fund-raising campaign, says there will still be plenty of room for soccer. He disputes Mora’s accusations of insensitivity.

“I’m dumbfounded,” D’Incau said. “I get confused. On what grounds is this a Latino issue?”

On his desk, D’Incau keeps a picture of his 11-year-old daughter in her soccer uniform. His wife referees youth matches.

“Soccer is not limited to any group, gender or race,” D’Incau said.

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The drive for new equipment began last fall. Children dropped spare change into glass jars at school. The Masons held a community dinner. And the nearly $25,000 raised brought slides, a plastic gazebo and climbing bars.

The new collection would replace 1950s-era playground equipment that is now at the back of the fields. Navy Seabees have volunteered to install the playground this summer.

But the problem, critics say, is location: Under the current plan, the equipment would cut into the 50-by-100-yard space needed to meet youth league standards. Older players need even more room than that, says Mora, also a soccer coach. Plus, opponents say, youngsters would risk banging into the equipment during the competitive, high-speed matches.

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“To understand our point of view is to know the sport of soccer,” said Reuben Munoz, a youth soccer coach who calls Harrington School vital to numerous after-school leagues. Opponents are asking D’Incau to move the equipment 20 yards north, a step they say would keep room clear for competition.

D’Incau, however, says that would take the playground out of a central location, making it harder for teachers to monitor the children swinging and climbing on the equipment.

In any case, there will still be room for numerous smaller practice fields, he said. Those fields can be merged for youth league play, rendering the critics’ complaints about regulation sizes moot, he said.

Parent Margie Llanes, a former PTA president, said she is troubled that race has entered the debate. Her 9-year-old daughter goes to Harrington, where 97% of students are Latino. “I’m Mexicana, Chicana, and it isn’t a cultural issue,” she said. “This is pretty ridiculous.”

In Mora’s classroom, a wall is covered with newspaper articles on the upcoming World Cup.

He says he won’t back down. “I’m just outspoken,” he said.

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Parents and teachers were to meet Tuesday night to discuss the issue. And tonight, trustees will try to get them to settle the problem peacefully and on their own, Supt. Bernard Korenstein said.

“It seems to be a community looking at the same playground from different perspectives,” Korenstein said. “And maybe it’s because they haven’t gotten together and looked at it together.”