KAILUA-KONA — Young or old, everybody likes new toys.
But Stephanie Landers says the kindergarten students at Waikoloa Elementary and Middle School wouldn’t just enjoy new playground equipment, they absolutely need it.
For two years, the school and its Parent Teacher Student Association have been fundraising to revamp the playground. Despite the groups raising more than $30,000 for the project, the youngsters are still waiting for a new jungle gym from which to swing.
Landers, who serves as the new president of the Waikoloa PTSA, said the reason is that the Department of Education can’t make up its mind.
“The problem has been that the DOE seems to keep changing its rules and standards, and communication has not been all that great,” she said. “Each time we thought we’d made progress, the DOE would come back with a new demand, forcing the vendors to draw up new plans and new prices, which then had to be resubmitted.”
Landers asserts the DOE has slowed the project on at least four separate occasions. Once, it was to reduce the overall area by 500 square feet. Later, the DOE said the playground’s quoted price must be reduced by $10,000.
Landers said the original agreement was that the school and PTSA would combine to raise $30,000 of the $160,000 playground pricetag, and the DOE would take care of the rest.
Brent Suyama, a spokesperson for the DOE, contradicted that claim, saying that the DOE initially pledged $100,000 to fund the project with an agreement that interested parties in Waikoloa would combine to raise $60,000. He added that the DOE-mandated $10,000 quote reduction came after the department was presented by the school and the PTSA with a quote for $143,000.
It was the DOE’s understanding, Suyama said, that Waikoloa parties had raised $34,000 for the project and that a $10,000 reduction would thus make the project feasible.
“I understand the frustration,” he said. “But we have to spread money out.”
Landers said the cuts will limit the size of the playground and may force the school to scale back on the equipment it offers kids, although more fundraising is underway in hopes of avoiding that.
PTSA and community members will remove the old equipment themselves to cut costs, as well as the wood chips serving as ground cover, which Landers’ said often splinter the hands and feet of children.
She added the old equipment can’t be re-installed in the new playground. It was grandfathered in after new regulations were implemented, but those changes render its installation in a new setup illegal.
Landers’ greatest concern, however, is completing the renovation as soon as possible because of what she described as dangerous conditions. The playground is lined with wooden planks roughly nine inches high to keep in the wood chips, over which Landers said children frequently trip. Those planks are secured by exposed rebar.
“Wood chips in a kindergarten playground do not go well with children running and playing,” Landers said. “As a nurse at North Hawaii Community Hospital, I just know it’s a matter of time before a child is impaled on this rebar, so it really concerns me.”
School principal Kris Kosa-Correia said her latest email from the DOE explained that playgrounds are on hold “for next year and beyond” until the department gets the heat abatement issue under control.
Suyama said that was not the case, stating that money for the two initiatives does not originate from the same fund.