Feet poked by playground wood chips spur change

After two students and an instructional aide had their feet poked with playground wood chips at Washington Elementary, the Burbank Unified school board has agreed to spend about $80,000 to replace the wood chips with artificial turf.

“Recently, we’ve had a couple of students and a staff member actually have the wood chips go through their shoes and so we would like to get those replaced as soon as possible,” said David Jaynes, assistant superintendent of Burbank Unified, during last week’s school board meeting.

The $79,620 cost, agreed to unanimously by board members, was “so that we avoid further harm to anybody,” Jaynes said.

The wood chips will be replaced in two locations on Washington’s campus — the main playground and the kindergarten area — with turf that has been already installed at McKinley, Disney, Providencia and Edison elementary schools.

The incidents also spurred Burbank school officials to take inventory of where else the wood chips are located at Burbank schools.

“I think, realistically, the conversation that we did have and the one being brought back to us at the subcommittee level is what it will cost for us to just deal with the wood-chip issue once and for all,” said school board member Larry Applebaum.