First Stratford Landing Elementary School in Fairfax County, Va., didn’t have a climbing gym in its playground. Then it did, after parents spent months raising $35,000. Then it didn’t again, after administrators decided to shut it down on the grounds that climbing on monkey bars might be hazardous to kids’ health.
MailOnline reports that parents of children enrolled in the school consulted “with authorities to ensure the site met required standards,” adding:
But before a child could set foot in the playground, [the school’s] authorities performed a last-minute U-turn and deemed it to be a hazard.
Bright yellow caution tape now festoons the apparatus to warn off any children.
Not to worry, though. The 870 pupils in the school will have their play space yet. But it won’t cost anywhere near $35,000. The district has pledged to spend about $135,000 from the county’s coffers to replace the equipment with a safe alternative.
Parents, who funded the project and hired a contractor — all done under the watchful eye of the school’s administration — are dumbstruck by the decision. They argue that same equipment is installed at more than 1,200 parks and schools across the country. They also argue that it’s a waste of taxpayer money to tear down the extant equipment and replace it with its functional equivalent at many times the original cost.
But John Torre, a spokesman for the school, told the Washington Post:
Unfortunately, the playground equipment purchased by the PTA does not meet FCPS safety standards. We are currently working with school officials to consider options to upgrade and renovate the entire school playground.
Assuming the first part of Torre’s statement is true, why didn’t the administration speak up sooner?
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It’s so much easier to make non-solutions look like solutions when you bundle them into a big, impressive binder with lots more non-solutions.
No title? Stealth post?
Damn! I just checked and my fly was open, too.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Good Lord. We had monkey bars on top of asphalt on school grounds. And I sat in the back of a VW bug (the luggage area.) However did we survive childhood back in the day?
We also played cops and robbers and survived that, but try telling that to school administrators.
In late September 1964, was a tap tap tap at the back door of our quarters at Niagara Air Force Base. My father went to the slider, and called me to the door. Standing there was another five year old boy crew cut, freckles and missing teeth and what looked like a four year old peaking out from behind him.
“Hi! My name is Chuck! We are moving in next door, and my Dad says you have a kid my age. We (his little brother Steve it turns out) wanna know if he wants to come out and play football with us.”
My father, a 29 year old Army Captain just starting his two year stint teaching Army ROTC at Niagara University, smiled broadly… told me… “Get dressed… dungarees -he was a Navy Junior, and there were no such things as ‘jeans’ – sweatshirt… Wear two tee-shirts!…”
So there I was, vast common back yard a couple of kid ball caps… and Chuck’s “football” was a baseball glove, folded around a ball of old socks in the web, and taped up with masking tape.
“Ok, do you know how to play? ”
I had a good idea, my dad was a football fanatic, and we had it on the TV every fall weekend. But I thought there needed to be more guys than the three of us.
“We aren’t playing here… there’s a bunch of guys across the street who want to play. So, lemme show you what we’re gonna do.”
I learned to hike the ball, tuck it, run… and something that was the most fun… TACKLE!!! After I got the basics.. I told my dad that we were going across the street to the big playground in the main circle. This was the baby boom, young officers in the military had lots of kids.. Air Force (when it was really the military), Marines, and me the one Army brat…
There were kids as old as ten or eleven all the way to kindergarten. It must have been close to 20. Well, maybe ten.. or fifteen. But we divided up teams… lined up (someone had a real football), on a field of completely uncertain size, measured up by the older kids… and someone punted the ball… someone caught it… and along with a couple of other kids.. I got on on my first tackle.. got a goose egg under my eye.. and felt like 10 million dollars… Well, that game went on until one of those fathers came out.. and issued dinner call to a significant part of the group.
Everyone smiling and laughing, cuts, bruises, jammed hands… turned ankles and all.. we went home… Mom iced the goose egg, Dad checked the twisted ankles… and iced them down…
Chuck’s mother tapped on the front door to check on me. Of course my father and his father started talking, it turned into an impromptu late September barbeque and Chuck and Steve on the floor with me playing with whatever toys I had. We were also plotting the next day’s game. We were going to win this time.
I live off the back side of a middle school, behind the football field and track. If it had been 1964, 1965… that field would never have been empty. We’d have killed a teddy bear to have a real football field to play on.
You don’t see kids playing sandlot tackle anymore. It’s too dangerous! They’ll get hurt!! Boo freaking hoo… I am tired of the weenies that our society is producing. Boys who act like girls… girls who think their boys beyond the usual tomboy or two… and everyone afraid to get “hurt”.
We have become a society of little old ladies… prissy… sniping… and unhappy…
I really miss those days…
r/TMF
I also tire of idiot spell checkers… they’re… dag nab it!!!
Not to mention they sometimes fail to catch errrors.
“why didn’t the administration speak up sooner?”
It was intentional. No other explanation fits the facts. As, all was “done under the watchful eye of the school’s administration”.
And there’s only one explanation that accounts for the school administration doing this intentionally; push the parents out of decision making and eliminate school official’s accountability to parents. This is part of a pattern, part of a campaign by the left to eliminate any feedback and oversight by parents.
The left wants unfettered control of our children so that they can deepen the indoctrination they are engaged in and to lower the age where they gain control of the children with ever younger indoctrination being initiated.
I love your website;thanks for the great advice