CULLMAN, Ala. – With on-campus instruction suspended for the rest of the academic year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some schools are taking advantage of this time to do maintenance and make improvements to their campuses. East Elementary School’s in the city of Cullman has recently purchased playground equipment, thanks to the school’s Parent Teacher Organization (PTO).
Principal David Wiggins shared some details on what students can expect when they return to campus.
“We are putting new borders around the playground to keep the pea gravel in. Pea gravel of course is a safety precaution for the kids, in case they were to fall at full speed, so they can’t have too many accidents on the playground. We’re most excited about the spiral spinners, or curve spinners; some companies call them a vortex. Students stand up on them and spin. It’s one of the things our kids really wanted from surveys we did years ago,” he said. “We are also adding shade. If you’ve ever been out to the East Elementary playground, we only have one shade tree on the east side; the others were blown down by the (April 2011) tornado. We always wanted to have shade back, though. We do have shade trees being grown now thanks to an Eagle Scout from a few years ago, but until they reach full maturity, we needed some shade, so our PTO bought a massive shade piece to put up.”
Speaking of the PTO, Wiggins wants the community to know how much the group helps the school.
“Our PTO is doing beautiful stuff at school,” he smiled. “The equipment was purchased through and by our PTO. I can’t say enough about this group of men and women. They have set their minds to something when the school identified a need. We met with the PTO and they get moving on the project. Our school’s cookie dough fundraiser was the primary source of revenue, but they’ve done other things like the school supply sale- that’s going on now- and of course our Shamrock Shuffle, our 1K and 5K run. They take funding from those things and put it directly into areas that benefit our students first, and then our teachers. I can’t say enough on what they’re doing!”
Wiggins said East has utilized the school system’s maintenance department for the playground upgrade.
“The big thing about this is to save up on costs,” he said. “We have a phenomenal Cullman City Schools Maintenance Department. They have taken on the task of installing the new equipment. They’re pouring the concrete down, digging the holes, putting in the braces and attaching everything in a safe manner. They’re doing that themselves, so we don’t have to hire an outside company to come and do the work, so it’s all hometown Cullman!”
Wiggins is confident the new equipment will be a real benefit to his students.
“More active play! What we have found is, over the years, we track injuries on the playground through the nurse’s office and we remove those pieces that were most detrimental to student health, or those pieces that were antiquated,” he said. “We do so safety inspections of our equipment. When something gets old, something gets rusted, it’s time to be removed. We took three pieces away, and we’re slowly adding things back. All the kids will benefit from this. When you take something away, there are less things for more kids to play on, so putting these new pieces will spread out more adequately and appropriately and they’ll have more fun with their friends.”
He continued, “It’s been about two years we’ve been looking at getting shade. Again, first of all you decide what you need, then you send out ideas of how it would look, do some estimates on what it would cost. Our students are involved; they’re asked what they want and how they’d like it to look, so it’s like a family project.”
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