A downtown resident came to the March 25 school board meeting asking why the Whittier Elementary School playground was closed.

Troy Lane, the vice chair of the downtown Neighborhood Council 7, asked the school board if parents or other nearby residents could volunteer to help monitor the playground and keep it open.

Great Falls Public Schools had closed the playground in late 2022 due to vandalism and other issues.

Lane didn’t know at the time that GFPS had reopened the playground the week prior.

City approves $200k for Whittier playground installation [2022]

The City Commission approved $200,000 of Community Development Block Grant funding for playground in April 2022 for the playground pieces and the woodchips.

GFPS paid for the fencing and the asphalt for the playground totaling about $30,000.

The playground opened in October 2022.

Within the first month it was open, the playground was vandalized five times, according to Lance Boyd, GFPS assistant superintendent.

He said that the manufacturer replaced all those vandalized pieces at no cost.

GFPS elementary libraries getting remodel through donations

There were seven incidents of vandalism in the first five months the playground was open and the manufacturer replaced all of those. There have been 16 incidents of vandalism since the playground opened, Boyd said.

The majority of the vandalism has been by people ages 25-45.

Boyd said that people cut through the first several sets of locks the district put on the playground gates so they got heavy duty locks that are welded to the fence posts.

Shortly after the playground opened, fights among fifth and sixth graders were reported to police after 5 p.m.; weekend parties were happening with hours of cleanup by district staff; syringes were found as were condoms and a kindergartener thought it was a balloon and tried to blow it up, Boyd said.

Encampment removed from downtown church [2022]

The district decided to close the playground at night and on weekends because Boyd said officials were worried that the elementary students would find drugs or needles since staff couldn’t keep up with the cleanup needed at the time.

Boyd said it was around the time that the homeless encampment was at the nearby First United Methodist Church that the problems were most intense.

Initially, the playground was open during the school day too, but Boyd said people were randomly walking through while students were there, causing some significant issues.

He said that the district couldn’t justify leaving the playground open and having adults ruin everything so that the school children couldn’t use it.

Vandals targeting trees in city parks [2023]

Boyd said that the district reopened the playground in late March on the following schedule:

• open Monday through Thursday 2:30-8:30 p.m.
• open from 2:30 p.m. Fridays through 8:30 a.m. Mondays.
• open on school holidays
• closed Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. while school is in session

Boyd went to the April 8 Neighborhood Council 7 meeting to discuss the playground.

He said that since the playground reopened in late March, they haven’t had any issues.

Boyd attributes that in part to the new security camera system at the school, as well as to those who were causing problems not realizing that the park had been reopened.

Officials discuss school safety, student wellness

Boyd said that Sandy Rice of the downtown neighborhood council had contacted the school principal about the playground recently, but before that, no one had contacted the district about the playground since January 2023.

She had asked about the playground being closed since it was funded by CDBG funds.

The playground is still GFPS property and the district’s liability.

Other local agencies that receive CDBG funds retains ownership and liability of their projects funded with those federal funds.

CDBG funds are administered through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and are intended for projects and programs in low to moderate income areas.

GFPS requesting federal grant funds for inclusive playground

GFPS submitted the grant request and said in their 2022 application that typically, GFPS playground improvements are funded by local PTA fundraising efforts.

“With a high poverty school population, such as Whittier, the necessary connections for PTA fundraising to be effective are more limited as compared to a low poverty school population. This creates inequity for a school such as Whittier. Whittier Elementary is the second highest poverty school in the community and would be the fourth school in the district with a more inclusive playground for children of all abilities,” according to the staff report.

In 2019, the district received $350,000 for an inclusive playground at the new Longfellow Elementary School.

During the April 2022 meeting, Commissioners Joe McKenney and Rick Tryon questioned why the district should received CDBG funds since they had funding of their own.

GFPS received $418,200 in donations for Longfellow Elementary School [2019]

Then deputy planning director Tom Micuda said that whether the district had other funding sources was discussed by the application review committee, but considered the bigger picture of what this project could achieve in terms of providing a publicly accessible playground in a low to moderate income area and that CBDG funds were available.

“The overall public good of the project outweighed the question of how much more the school district could or should put into the project,” Micuda said in April 2022.

Neighborhood residents and former Whittier teachers, among others, spoke in favor of the CDBG funds for the playground, which commissioners eventually approved 4-0 with then Mayor Bob Kelly absent.

School playgrounds are typically open to the public when school is not in session.

Boyd said that the district will monitor the Whittier playground for the rest of the school to determine if it will be open for the summer when there’s often an uptick of vandalism.