On Friday morning, some of the students at the José Castellanos Camino Nuevo Charter Academy Elementary School, in the Pico/Union area of Los Angeles, were playing in the schoolyard. Excited, they began the class sitting on the asphalt and then ran to a dirt patio.
Around him there were no trees or plants. Their shouts and smiles mixed with the dust that rose as they played.
The students, mostly Latinos, have minimal options for green spaces in such a dense area where many live in apartments. The school is adjacent to the highway and on the other side across the street is the Angelus Rosedale Cemetery.
However, access to green space is yet to come thanks to Community Schoolyards Projects of The Trust for Public Land (TPL), which proposes to create, improve, and expand green space on Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) school campuses that are located within dense urban areas.
The initiative, known as 28X, is being carried out by a coalition of more than entities and has the objective of renewing 28 schools for the 2028.
The José Castellanos Camino Nuevo Charter Academy is a of the first two schools that are already beginning to work on the project that will provide trees, grass, plants and natural elements that provide ecological benefits such as the reduction of greenhouse gases.
Carla Rivera, supervisor of operations at the school, said that this change in the playground will be of great benefit to the children, who are mostly children of indigenous origin.
“Their parents are indigenous and work with nature and the earth. For us, this project is very special because it gives children access, that access to their roots. You can see them in nature,” said Rivera.
Another reason why they think it is good to change the look of the school playground is because several migrant children have already had the experience of being detained for several months in detention centers.
“A school that does not have a field for them to play will remind them of that trauma that they they have those places,” said Rivera.
The project, which is scheduled to begin in the summer at José Castellanos Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, will provide a living schoolyard where native landscapes, Natural play areas, shade trees, and an outdoor nature classroom will inspire and provide an academic sanctuary for approximately 460 kindergarten through fifth grade students.
The key elements of the project include the elimination of 1,500 square feet of asphalt, planting trees, installing native plants, building a system filtration and stormwater capture, if feasible. Also the use of solar reflective paint in hard areas to help reduce the urban heat island effect.
Years of preparation
In the 2019, Matilda Reyes, project supervisor with TPL, came to the school to ask fourth graders to help her create a picture of what they would like their playground to look like in the future.
Children with little information and knowledge of the creation of green areas could only think of adding a playground to the patio.
“They really don’t know other things and I taught them about the water cycle and where we get it from, we taught them the effect of the hot island and how, when you only have asphalt it will be hot , but if you put trees and plants you reduce the heat”, explained Reyes.
Later she took them on a trip to learn more about the options for the recreational area. Later they carried out a survey where the children added a list of things they would like to have.
Among the 10 Top things requested in the survey were shade trees, rubber surfaces, art classes, nature play area, and a irrigation system.
“All the children collaborated and created a design…, they were also in charge of putting a theme on it and they all chose the jaguar because that’s the mascot here at school,” Reyes said.
Although the initial group of fourth graders have already graduated from school, Reyes said it would be an honor to invite everyone to see , that the plans they proposed became a reality.
Dayana Molina, a community organizer with TPL, said they did a study with the Living Schoolyard Coalition and found that through the projects in the 000 schools could bene pay until 000,000 children with access to a green patio.
The Greener Schoolyards for Los Angeles study revealed that in Los Angeles, more than 1.5 million people, including more than a third of children, people of color, and residents of low-income households, live more than 10 minutes walk to a quality park. And the green spaces nearby often fall short of meeting the needs of the community.
The study reveals that having these green spaces within school campuses can bring additional benefits such as increased physical activity, improvement of mental health, equitable access to green spaces and reduction of air pollution, water pollution and energy consumption.
“There are also plans to make agreements and policies that would allow us in the future that the surrounding community has access to increase the green spaces that are so needed”, added Molina.
To know more about the project visit: https://www.tpl.org/green-schoolyards-los-angeles