Boston Schoolyard Initiative - An Overview

History- In 1994, the Boston GreenSpace Alliance and the Urban Land Use Task Force approached Mayor Thomas M. Menino to initiate a dialogue about the state of Boston’s public schoolyards and the possibility of public and private sectors cooperating to revitalize these historically neglected spaces. Although ad hoc groups around the city were working to improve their local school grounds, projects were taking 5-8 years to complete and all suffered from a lack of capital investment. The Mayor enthusiastically convened a broad-based Schoolyard Task Force to devise a process which would fund projects and help hasten their completion. The Boston Schoolyard Initiative (BSI) public/private partnership was formally launched in 1995 and it is currently in its twelfth year of operations.

Funding - In 2006, the City of Boston and the Boston Schoolyard Funders Collaborative (BSFC) agreed to extend the Initiative for another three rounds (rounds 7, 8 and 9). We will work with six schools a year for each of the next three years with construction scheduled for the summers of 2008, 2009 and 2010. The City is allocating $1.8 million a year from their capital budget and the BSFC has pledged $600,000 in capital funds annually. BSFC is also devoting funds to underwrite our work with the Boston public schools (BPS) to implement experiential schoolyard pedagogies for teachers and students.

Participating Sites - The Boston Schoolyard Initiative has improved 70 schoolyards across Boston’s many diverse neighborhoods. Grade levels include pre-K through high school. By the end of Round 9, in 2010, we will have worked with approximately 85 schools.

Community Organizing - Local foundations have underwritten the Organizing & Planning Grants ($15,000) that serve as a gateway into the development process. Once awarded, these grants allow schools to hire part time organizers who conduct outreach, facilitate meetings, and bring resources and expertise to schoolyard groups. These groups seek to include any potential users of the school grounds as well as those who might be impacted by its revitalization. The BSI community process has helped bring together schools and neighborhoods on projects that truly improve the quality of life for all. These are the bonds from which sustainable cities are made.

Teaching & Learning - Schoolyards are different than parks and playgrounds. Their proximity to schools cry out for a higher degree of interactivity and they offer us the opportunity to combine recreation, creative play, and academic learning. A student for whom English is a second language, or who is under-performing in a text-based environment, may blossom in an outdoor classroom where hands-on activities are the rule. Measuring the schoolyard’s metes and bounds will add a “real world” application to the study of mathematics. Planting and caring for a tree adds a living three dimensional element to biology. Birdfeeders in the schoolyard inspire observation and classification that is intimate as well as instructional. No textbook will equal the thrill of watching a real bird snatch sunflower seeds from a class-constructed feeder. Experiential learning is a proven teaching methodology that has groups of students problem-solving and critically thinking in ways that will benefit them throughout their academic and working lives.

For the past three years, BSFC has piloted the installation of Outdoor Classroom areas that are specifically designed to align with the BPS core curriculum. We are currently working with BPS Academic Officers to strengthen these relationships and to fully integrate use of the Outdoor Classroom into the teaching and learning culture of our public schools.

BSI’s commitment to schoolyard revitalization has already been the catalyst for many partnerships with community-based educational institutions. Resources and expertise are flowing into the Boston Public Schools. The Boston Schoolyard Funders Collaborative awards grants to educators to design & field test schoolyard learning activities or to participate in professional development opportunities. Teachers are being empowered to conduct interdisciplinary lessons in the schoolyard and students are grateful for an alternative to rote learning. Some of the local organizations working directly on schoolyard activities include:

• Children’s Museum
• Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University
• Massachusetts Audubon Society
• Dunn Foundation
• Massachusetts Horticultural Society
• Earthworks
• City Year/Boston
• Boston Society of Architects’ Learning by Design Group
• Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management
• Massachusetts Water Resources Authority
• Boston Recycling Office
• Impact II
• Annenberg Math & Science Project
• Urban Ecology Institute

This growing sense of educational excitement is directly related to the construction of learning areas in multi-use schoolyards. An indoor classroom is more than four walls and a ceiling. There are desks and chairs, a blackboard, computers in one area, art supplies in another, and perhaps a reading corner. A schoolyard with lined games and maps, a garden or natural area, an amphitheater or stage, and places in which a teacher can manage and focus a class, will be a productive setting for creative play and learning. We are only beginning to see the great potential of the outdoor classroom.

Maintenance/Sustainability - One of the guiding principles of the Boston Schoolyard Initiative is that a participatory process will lead to a stronger sense of local ownership. To this end, Schoolyard Friends Groups and the School Department have developed a Shared Maintenance Protocol that assigns responsibility for a variety of tasks. The City is responsible for “baseline” maintenance which includes routine inspections, repair & maintenance of play structures & fencing, removal of trash & graffiti, lawn care, snow removal, lighting, signage, and the sweeping & repair of hard surfaces. Schoolyard Friends Groups are expected to organize spring/fall clean-up events, engage in planting activities, re-paint lined games & maps, and to report acts of vandalism or abuse to authorities. Schoolyard Rules of Behavior are written by students and prominently posted. In addition to local custodians, the Boston School Department has assembled a Boston Schoolyard Initiative Maintenance Crew whose sole focus is on school grounds. The Boston Schoolyard Funders Collaborative has sponsored GreenSpace Management Workshops for custodians and friends.

The Future - The Boston Schoolyard Initiative has learned much from what we have already achieved. The weaving together of community development, educational innovation, and environmental stewardship is strengthening the fabric of our city’s neighborhoods and empowering its residents. We are supporting our teachers and sending a message to our youth that schools are special places, even fun places, and that we will do whatever is necessary to give students the broadest and most complete education possible. We must, however, devise systems to sustain both capital improvements and ongoing programming. As we continue to organize diverse schoolyard groups, we will be working with our government partners, the private sector, and the people of Boston to put these spaces to their highest possible use and to maintain them for future generations. Ten years ago, not many would have included schoolyards in the pantheon of Boston’s open spaces. Parks, playgrounds, urban wilds, and community gardens have long been important to Bostonians, but schoolyards were simply too degraded to register in the mind’s eye. Today, schoolyards are being acknowledged as perhaps our most important urban open space. Centrally located, open to neighborhood residents, and integrated into the educational system, schoolyards have truly become grounds for celebration.