For elementary students at P.S. 185 in Harlem, recess is more than just an empty lot.
Students now have a jungle gym, track, and basketball hoops at the school, located at 112th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard, built by Out2Play, a non-profit started by Business School alumna Andrea Wenner, Business ‘05.
The city Department of Education announced on Jan. 11 that it will provide up to $12 million for Out2Play to build 70 new playgrounds for New York City schools.
Out2Play has already built playgrounds for 80 schools, including seven in Manhattan in the last year, working with students to help design the playgrounds, Wenner said.
Before 2010, Wenner had funded her projects through private donations and public funds from city politicians. Now she has $12 million directly from the DOE to provide the majority of funds for new projects, with Out2Play matching up to a third.
At P.S. 185, a lot with a single basketball hoop was transformed in the summer of 2009 into a place where students have “the freedom to choose,” activities, according to parent coordinator Monika Vargas.
“Playing is teaching. Through playing you learn, but if you don’t have the equipment and resources, how can you play?” she said.
Wenner came up with the idea for Out2Play during her second year at Columbia Business School.
As a sports competitor herself, Wenner observed that at many public schools lacking outdoor facilities: “Kids just stood on the street during recess.”
“I thought this would be a great way to provide the students with guaranteed time to be outside and active,” she said. Now that the project has gotten off the ground, she said has seen changes for the school and for neighborhood residents.
“Now, a lot more kids are active, a lot more kids are playing ball, and they are not getting in fights,” she said.
Wenner was taking Professor Clifford Schorer’s ‘Launching New Ventures’ course when she developed the idea.
“To see that their decrepit parking lot could be turned into this vibrant playground just had a great impact on the students,” said Schorer, who is Entrepreneur In Residence at the Business School and now a board member of Out2Play.
Daniel Margulies, architect on the Out2Play project, explained that though every school’s playground is customized, most of the yards share some common features, such as organized play structures and sports fields, as well as free play areas so that the children “can invent their own games.”
Out2play aims to involve the kids in the whole process from the beginning and continuing on indefinitely, Margulies said, adding, “We encourage them to add onto the site after [we are done]…like changing a mural, something they can do on their own.”
“It’s a really nice process,” said Jane Murphy, Interim Principal of PS 185, explaining that the design team meets with the students to find out what they would like to see. Murphy said they get to design a “dream playground.”
“There are times when some of the better ideas come from the third grader,” Margulies added.
The playgrounds are used for recess, after-school programs, and PE classes, said Wenner. “If they are going to be outside during supervised time, the feeling is to do something constructive,” she said.
Margulies said that Out2Play also allows them to expose students to the world of architecture through class sessions about structural design.
Sometimes the schools get the students involved in fundraising through letters to elected officials, Wenner said. “It’s a good academic exercise,” she said.
Marge Feinberg, spokesperson for the DOE, said in an e-mail, “It is our goal to partner with nonprofit organizations to transform vacant schoolyards into vibrant playgrounds and give thousands more of our students access to safe outdoor space ... Providing more playgrounds within a 10-minute walk from children’s homes ensures that many more children will have the opportunity to get the exercise and physical activity they need during the school day.” This is one goal of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC, she said.
But Margulies said that the students are just excited to have a new place to play. He said, “They go outside and think they’re in Yankee Stadium.”
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