Elementary Adds New Playground Equipment
by Ella Gaes
Starting the year off right, the Pierce Elementary School made an addition to the preschool play area.
Initial plans to purchase the playset began well over a year ago at the first PATS (Parents and Teachers for Students) meeting in August. PATS president Katie Prince stated, “It takes quite a bit of collaboration with the school, community and companies to make this happen, but it was a wonderful experience, with only a few hiccups along the way.”
The installation was initially set to be in July of 2022, but due to a fire within the assembly factory it was delayed a few times. Thankfully it was able to be installed for the first week of school!
Preschool guidelines require that the play area for that age group to be fully enclosed. This was a change that occurred before the start of school about four years ago. At that time and due to the short amount of notice, the school made the necessary enclosure to meet these guidelines. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of time prior to the change to be able to add any sort of play equipment at that time and the school and teachers put their heads together to make a fun space with trikes and Little Tikes playsets. As most parents realize, those playsets are very nice, but they simply cannot withstand the amount of kids who use them currently with the preschool classes, so the PATS organization decided to make a change.
After talking to Prince, she explained how PATS strived to impact the school and students. “With money earned through our fundraising events throughout the year (cookie dough sales, snack sales, and spirit sales), PATS was able to raise enough money to be able to expand the fence that was initially built, expand the concrete within that area, and we were able to purchase this new playset through Next Generation recreation. We were also able to purchase a wood shed that the high school shop class made to be able to store play equipment such as balls for the playground, flag football flags, the trikes among other things. We are really excited to be able to welcome the newest kiddos to Pierce Elementary with a brand new playset that is built and sized just for them. Hopefully the kids will enjoy the new equipment and give them the space necessary to run and play and move outside of the classroom.”
Preschool teacher Presley Young commented on the playset, “We are so excited for this new addition, and the kids love it!”
PATS is an organization that anyone can be active in. Every parent who has a student who attends Pierce Elementary is a part of the PATS organization. There are meetings the last Tuesday of every month through the school year as well as events that are hosted throughout the school year.
Prince encourages anyone to join. “It is a great group to work with and it is really nice to meet new parents and be a part of a group to support our students and school staff. There are so many working parts to the school that I, as a parent, did not realize until I joined PATS. It is a great collaboration among parents, teachers, administration, and staff. We are currently looking at new ways to improve our school and would love to hear parental input as well.”
