A third of Philly elementary schools have no playgrounds. Here’s how one school made a $2.1 million miracle happen.

A miracle five years in the making came to F. Amedee Bregy School in South Philadelphia last month: shiny new play equipment, a basketball court, a track, a patch of soft, emerald-green turf, and 30 new trees.

For years, Bregy kids and those in the surrounding neighborhood had only a cracked expanse of asphalt on which to play. When it was windy, first-grade teacher Nicole Cartagena remembers, aides would throw plastic bags in the air for kids to chase, because there was nothing else to do.

But now, “it’s so nice to come to school in the morning and see the children playing and laughing and having a good time,” Cartagena said — racing, sliding, spinning, climbing on state-of-the-art equipment designed by Bregy students themselves, with the assistance of professionals.

But the Bregy playground, open to the public during non-school hours, is not reflective of all Philadelphia schools. Too often, Philadelphia Water Department Commissioner Randy Hayman said at the Bregy playground opening, “beautiful spaces like this aren’t in our communities.”

While Bregy, a K-8, is one of 93 Philadelphia School District elementary schools that either have existing playgrounds or new playgrounds under construction, 56 — one in three city elementaries — have no play structures at all.

As is the case in so many areas, the school system’s needs do not match its available funding.

“We’re really looking to transform all our schoolyards,” said Emma Melvin, program manager of the district’s Green Infrastructure Program, who runs point on district playground projects. But, she said, it won’t happen in the near future: The goal is to develop a 10-year plan to get all schoolyards a playground or play yard.

“We know that we don’t have the capacity to complete all the transformations in a year, or even a fourth of them,” said Melvin. “That really hinges on partners, funding availability, additional resources — all of those.”

Playgrounds are on every elementary school principal’s wish list. But how do they happen in a school district that has 216 old buildings with massive capital needs and barely any budget for such spaces?

In some cases, parents and community members with connections, financial resources, and know-how make it happen, but most district schools don’t have those resources. In Bregy’s case, it took a partnership with the Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit that has built 13 playgrounds in the district so far, with two more in construction or planning stages.

Owen Franklin, TPL’s Pennsylvania state director, said the district determines where the organization puts playgrounds, but TPL has a say, too, looking for areas that have historically been denied investment, where there’s a lack of access to parks and play spaces, and where it can attract diverse funding streams.

“We look to do as many projects as we can, but we need to raise funds for all of our work,” Franklin said.

Bregy took much longer to build than anyone anticipated, mostly because of the pandemic, said Franklin. The children who participated in initial design work were in fourth grade when the project began; they’re now eighth graders, on the brink of high school.

Of the $2.1 million needed to build the Bregy schoolyard, various funders kicked in, including TPL, the federal government, and the Philadelphia Water Department. The district contributed $275,000.

Playgrounds may seem like window dressing, but they’re not, said Franklin.

“This is big impact, transformational impact,” said Franklin — not just in the way the space looks and feels, but in the experiences it provides, and other benefits such as stress relief, trauma reduction, and more.

In addition to Bregy’s 300 students, nearly 9,000 people live within a 10-minute walk of the new green space, which will manage 1.5 million gallons of stormwater annually, TPL estimates.

Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr., who took a joyful spin on a piece of new Bregy play equipment, declared it “an absolutely tripping-the-light-fantastic play space” and said “it helps our young people to be healthy. It helps them to be well.”

If the goal, said Melvin, is to make every schoolyard like Bregy’s — a “welcoming and active play area” — the reality in an underfunded school system is that “we have to do this one schoolyard at a time.”

Five years ago, two-thirds of district elementary schools had no playgrounds; those numbers have shifted, thanks in large part to partnerships with organizations such as the Trust for Public Land, but also with the William Penn Foundation, the Eagles, and others.

Equity is an ongoing concern. The school system now uses a “vulnerability index” to help decide which projects get approved and in which order, taking into consideration facility condition, school performance, and other factors, but a map of Philadelphia elementary schools’ playground haves and have-nots still shows swaths of schools with no play structures.

“We’re not here to say we’re not going to get to you till 10 years from now,” Melvin said. “But we’re trying to prioritize who needs all the support that we can provide, who needs some of the support.”

Lillie Lewis runs recess at Steel Elementary on Wayne Avenue in Nicetown. Before the school got a playground that opened this past summer, the school’s first, the yard wasn’t much to look at, said Lewis, a paraprofessional who has worked at Steel for seven years.

“It looked like nothing,” said Lewis.

“If you don’t give kids kid things, then they do things they shouldn’t do,” said Lewis. “They can’t be kids if they don’t have the tools and resources to do that.”

While some projects are total yard overhauls, such as Bregy’s, some are like Steel’s, more modest.

Steel received $45,000 from the Block Cares, a youth empowerment nonprofit, to build its new playground. Former school counselor Maria Lajara carved out time to write grants when she worked at Steel — that was the only way the school could get extra resources in the current funding structure, she said.

A playground is particularly important in a city beset by gun violence and to children affected by trauma, said Lajara, who is now an assistant principal at McKinley Elementary in North Philadelphia.

“It just builds on kids’ social-emotional learning,” said Lajara. “It promotes structure, responsibility, and appreciation for having nice things. A lot of our kids unfortunately don’t have safe playgrounds in the neighborhood.”

Steel’s playground is small, with just enough room for one grade to play at once, and students take turns, said Lewis. But it has changed the way kids feel about the yard, she said.

“It’s a lovely sight when you walk past our school and see a sliding board and swings,” she said. “It looks like a school is supposed to look, not a vacant parking lot.”