Schoolyards are supposed to be somewhere kids want to play. But if your schoolyard is little more than an empty expanse of asphalt – merely boring when the weather is fine but mercilessly hot and unprotected when the mercury rises – then it becomes the opposite: a place kids want to avoid.
This was the reality for roughly 300 US public schools until they joined a program that completely transformed them. They range from a Brooklyn school now graced with flowers, trees and a gazebo to a “little oasis of green space” in Philadelphia. And a new initiative to replace 28 schoolyards has just been launched in Los Angeles.
