I received another nice email from a parent wondering why we had one piece of our playground equipment replaced a year ago and why is that piece of playground equipment designed for children age 2-5. Here is my response:
All schools have a kindergarten playground and a regular playground. At some schools these are located in two different areas and at some schools they are together. At Clemens they are together. Two years ago concerns were raised about our old kindergarten playground equipment. It was determined that there were some possible safety issues, so the kindergarten play equipment was replaced last summer, at no cost to Clemens Crossing. We were not scheduled to receive new equipment so we did not get both play sets replaced, we only got the new piece to replace the kindergarten equipment that was removed. At the time I investigated how much it would cost to replace the other playset, and it would have cost over $20,000 which the school would have had to pay for. That was prohibitively expensive and that is why we have one older (although not old) and one newer play set out there. It is also why the sign says ages 2-5 for the new piece of equipment, since it is designed for kindergarten students the school system buys the 2-5 age range and not the 6-11 age range. It is safe for older students to use and we allow them to use it at recess, but technically it is our kindergarten equipment and the other blue and yellow climbing equipment is our grade 1-5 set.
