St. Anthony hopes to make grey schoolyard green

Jessica Kenny, Centretown News
St. Anthony School hopes to replace its paved schoolyard with plants and an outdoor classroom.
St. Anthony School is fundraising to turn its paved schoolyard into a more kid-friendly environment.

In hopes of replacing its lacklustre schoolyard with something more natural and inspiring, St. Anthony is running a campaign through the Aviva Community Fund to pay for the costs of its greening project, in which it plans to plant trees and grass, create new play structures and establish an “outdoor classroom” for the kids. The school is hoping to qualify for between $50,000 and $100,000.

Located near the corner of Booth and Gladstone, St. Anthony is a grades K-6 Catholic school. 

The Aviva Community Fund is an online community-building competition in which the public can vote on the idea they think most deserves funding. 

If an idea is supported by the community, it may qualify for the final round of competition in late December and early January, with the winner announced on Jan. 27, 2015.

St. Anthony principal Paul McGuire, who is spearheading the greening project, is working with the students to create an aesthetically pleasing and safer space for children to play.

“The end goal is basically to do what the kids want – to design a yard that is more kid-friendly,” says McGuire. “This is one of the only schools I’ve worked at that is entirely asphalt. When I go out on duty during the day, I bring a big bag of Band-Aids, because somebody always gets cut up.”

McGuire says that if the school wins the Aviva funding competition, work will begin next spring on an outdoor learning space for the students with wooden benches and a grass area to sit.

“One of Aviva’s criteria is that if you win, you need to show that you are getting work done by the summer, which won’t be a problem at all,” says McGuire. “One thing we can do right away is construct an outdoor classroom.”

According to McGuire, even if the school does not receive Aviva money, some of the project will still be possible through separate funding, such as the art mural that is going to be installed in the spring, but the large components of the project are dependent on what is earned through the Aviva competition.

”When we see how much we get from Aviva and our fundraising, we will see where to start construction,” says McGuire. 

The school has already partnered and met with Evergreen, a company that provides consultation to schools to help with the planning and implementation of greener yards. 

Through the company’s Toyota Evergreen Learning Grounds program, schools can apply for a “greening grant” of up to $3,500. St. Anthony has tapped into this resource to assist with project costs.

Andrew Harvey, a school ground design consultant with Evergreen, is working in collaboration with McGuire. Harvey has extensive experience in executing schoolyard designs.

“Nationally, Evergreen has helped build close to 4,000 outdoor natural play spaces in schools across the country,” says Harvey. 

“Once the teachers see the children retaining the knowledge they gain outdoors, they want more outdoor curriculum opportunities.”

St. Anthony is not the only school in the Centretown area to undertake a greening project. Glashan Public School has announced its own plan to green its schoolyard and increase the diversity of play space.

According to Angela Keller-Herzog, former chairwoman of the Glashan School Council’s green team, community fundraising has been successful in helping it bring its project to the ground and begin work this month with the installation of an art mural scheduled for Nov. 28. 

Glashan also entered the Aviva competition but did not receive any funding.

They did, however, receive the Toyota greening grant from Evergreen. “The trees and the greening that we’re doing now will benefit more kids in the future when they come to Glashan in one or two years,” says Keller-Herzog.