Playground to arrive by end of school year

SPOTSWOOD - Students at the E.R. Appleby School should have a new playground by the end of the school year.

Board of Education President Alan Bartlett said plans are complete and the necessary funding has been raised and set aside. The playground is slated to cost a total of about $120,000, according to board member Donna Faulkenberry, who spearheaded the movement to get the new playground. About $10,000 of the total cost will come fromfunds raised by the parent-run organization Kids Play.

The old playground at the Vliet Street school, which houses the borough's secondthrough fifth-grade students, was basically shut down last fall after officials learned that it violated state safety standards. Officials resolved at that time that the violations were not worth correcting, and took the equipment down entirely.

The new playground will include five slides, several running and balance bridges, as well as two separate climbing apparatuses, Faulkenberry said. In addition, there will be monkey bars, an eight-bay swing set and a par course gym, which she described as being a separate exercise station with incline benches, pull-up bars and other equipment. The par course gym will also be used for school gym classes.

Faulkenberry said that without the $10,000 raised by the Kids Play committee, the par course would not have been affordable. Caroyln Sorrentino is the current president of Kids Play, and Faulkenberry was involvedwith the groupwhen it raised funds for a playground at Schoenly School in 2006. Faulkenberry is also head of the board's playground committee and amember of the finance committee.

Kids Play raised the money for improvements to theAppleby playground before the school district even learned that the playground would have to be shut down, Faulkenberry said.

She said a full plan is in place for what the playground will look like upon completion. Officials are hoping the playgroundwill be completed before June, barring any bad winterweather.All of the playground equipment has either been ordered or is about to be ordered.

The new playground will be located behindAppleby School, near the location of the previous equipment.

When the old playgroundwas shut down, the district did put some portable equipment outside for theAppleby kids to use, Bartlett said. This was only a temporary fix, though, as the district realized a better situationwas needed.

"We had to look at what we could do," he said, adding that the district had planned to do work on the high school bleachers, but put that project on hold to free up funds for the playground.

Bartlett pointed out that many of the same children who were without a playgroundwhile at the Schoenly School are now without one atAppleby.

Faulkenberry said school officials were excited when Councilman Thomas Barlow approached them with the idea of seeking county open space funds for the playground. Thatmoney did not come through, however, because the school district owns the property, instead of the borough.

Faulkenberry said she thenmetwith the Appleby School principal, gym teacher and other officials to come up with plans for a more affordable playground.

Bartlett said the district is forever indebted to Kids Play and parents like Faulkenberry.

"She's just been fantastic," he said. "She's in there digging andworking hard every day. It was a question of the money, when your budget gets hammered 21 out of 22 years."