THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 20, 1995 TAG: 9503200054
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: FAIRFAX LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
One rainy weekend 15 years ago, more than 100 volunteers gathered for what many called the suburban equivalent of an Amish barn raising.
They erected a massive wood playground at Oak View Elementary School in Fairfax County. But now, that neighborhood showpiece and others like it are coming down. The structures' granola-and-sandals ambiance is being pushed aside by the safety and cost concerns of the litigious, bottom-line '90s.
School officials say the wood playgrounds have turned into a splintery maintenance migraine and pose safety and legal risks.
The school system is installing prefabricated play units of plastic-encased steel and other resilient materials in place of the pine timber, telephone poles and recycled monster tire constructions that beckoned scores of children.
But some parents complain that the new designs, while splinter-free, are not very child-friendly. And some students say they are a lot less fun.
``It's safer for the little kids,'' said Hunter Rhoades, a sixth-grader at Little Run school, which got its new shiny playground last summer, ``but the older kids really liked the old one.'' Now he shoots hoops instead.
Principal Dale Brooks of Navy Elementary said many parents had an emotional attachment to their 12-year-old wood playground.
``There was a big feeling of `We can't lose what helps make us a community,' '' she said, adding that parents finally came around to the new idea.
The large-scale teardown is virtually unprecedented, playground consultants say, owing to Fairfax County's widespread embrace of community-built wood playgrounds in the early '80s. By 1985, one in five elementary schools in Virginia's largest school district had one. By comparison, Prince George's County in Maryland has only two, both built since 1990.
``Fairfax County has been a major blemish on our track record,'' said Barry Segal, vice president of Leathers and Associates, the New York company that designed 25 of the playgrounds being dismantled.
In the past dozen years, there have been many improvements in Leathers' designs, Segal said.
Design and safety specialists say parents may have had unrealistic expectations for the equipment.
``Before wood, we had metal. Metal's supposed to last 40 years, and it did. The expectations for wood may have been the same,'' Frances Wallach said. An independent playground consultant, she advised the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the American Society for Testing and Materials in revising safety guidelines for playground equipment.
Fairfax's playgrounds were built largely for free, with donated materials and volunteer labor. The nearly $1 million replacement effort, which is about one-third completed, is being financed by county, school and PTA funds.
But not all the playgrounds are going gently to the scrap heap. Parents at two schools have rallied to save theirs with a proposal to replace the decks and handrails with a mixture of sawdust and recycled grocery bags that its manufacturer says does not rot or splinter. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS
The wood playground at Oak View Elementary School in Fairfax County
is a maintenance headache that poses safety and legal risks,
officials say. So play units of plastic-encased steel and other
resilient materials will replace the pine timber and monster tire
constructions.
KEYWORDS: PLAYGROUNDS by CNB