Horace Mann students to get a new playground with help from KaBOOM! and Disney
Horace Mann Elementary School will get a new playground this month, one that has features suggested by its students.
The new play area will replace the school’s former metal climbing dome that was about 30 years old, said Rosa Alonso, the school’s principal, as well as another 20-year-old apparatus that had monkey bars, but no slide.
“The kids really wanted slides,” Alonso said, so the new playground has slides.
Glendale school officials started talking about installing a new play area at Horace Mann when a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit called KaBOOM! approached the school district last year about getting rid of the old one.
The organization works to upgrade or build new playgrounds in low-income areas, while also engaging community partners for support by financing part of them and contributing volunteer hours to build them.
In this case, KaBOOM! secured the Walt Disney Co. as a financial backer, and about 150 Disney employees, alongside school officials and Horace Mann parents, will volunteer on July 14 to install the new playground.
Glendale Unified agreed to cover $175,000 of the total $300,000 cost. The Glendale Educational Foundation, along with the Horace Mann community, pitched in nearly $10,000, while Disney contributed the remaining amount.
At Horace Mann, 92% of students came from low-income households during the 2014-15 school year, making them eligible for free or reduced-priced meals, according to the latest data available from the California Department of Education.
The school’s demographics led KaBOOM! to coordinate support for a new playground, said Susan Hunt, executive director of the Glendale Educational Foundation, who showed the organization’s board members renderings of the new play area last week.
The concept for the new playground was designed by Lewisburg, Pa.-based Playworld, but only after Horace Mann students took pencil to paper to draw what they wanted in a new play area during a meeting at the school, where parents weighed in on the design, as well, Alonso said.
When Disney volunteers and parents show up to install the playground later this month, members of the Glendale Kiwanis Club plan to grill hamburgers and hot dogs to serve to them.
The installation is expected to begin at 8 a.m. and be complete by 2 p.m.
The collaboration of community partners, parents and educators to bring a new playground to a Glendale school is new for both Hunt and Alonso.
“Everybody working together for the common purpose of extending this opportunity for our students — this is an awesome experience,” Alonso said.
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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com
Twitter: @kellymcorrigan
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