Students at Haahuupayak School will have a brand-new playground complex for this school year.
On Friday, a crew of volunteers, led by Haahuupayak board chairman Martin Watts and principal Gio Musatto, began preparing the site prior to assembling the equipment, which lay in bright, multi-coloured and organized heaps.
“The old playground just disintegrated,” Musatto said. “It was old wooden structures that were all splintered. In fact, we have some aides here who remember playing on the same structures.”
Watts said the old equipment was moved over from the original school, which opened in 1986.
“It was in the old residential school building,” he explained. “The [residential] school already had a few teeter-totters and a swing set, and there was some stuff added.”
When the new Haahuupayak opened 15 years ago, some of that existing equipment was moved to the new site, and some new pieces were added, he explained.
All of the old equipment was carted away, and on Friday, volunteers spent much of the day hand-digging post-holes for the new equipment. Big holes.
When Ha-Shilth-Sa visited in mid-afternoon, the thermometer had climbed to 29 degrees Celsius. Musatto and Catherine Guzman were just trading places in the deepest excavation on the site.
“This one has to be four feet deep,” Musatto said. “It’s for the Berliner net dome. It holds up to 12 kids.”
Site supervisor Craig Jones, whose crew is working under sub-contract to Henderson Recreation, said he didn’t know off-hand exactly how many holes were required. Each one was marked out with spray-paint, and each one had to be dug to a specific depth to provide a secure footing for each piece of equipment.
“There’s a large play structure, a climbing net, swings, a rotating structure and a bowl-swing,” he said.
The four-foot hole is to set the axle for the rotating net, he explained. Each post is to be set in concrete, to specified “fall clearances.”
“This is top-of-the-line equipment. This is going to be the best playground in the Valley.”
Jones said supervising volunteer crews is fairly standard when installing school and community playgrounds, although most volunteers don’t usually show up in police uniform.
Constable Dan Engel is a member of the RCMP First Nations Community Policing Unit. He showed up after spending the morning at the courthouse, and immediately picked up a shovel and got down to work.
“They put out a call for able-bodied people to come out and help. First Nations youth is a priority for the RCMP, and I feel that, when the community has a project, I lend a hand,” Engel said. “My boss agreed, so that’s why I get to be out there. I’ll be back tomorrow morning, but I won’t be in uniform.”
Watts said thanks to improved funding through the Tripartite Agreement and Reciprocal Tuition funding, the Haahuupayak board has been able to allocate funds for items beyond staffing and rent. A few years ago, the decision was made to budget sufficient money to purchase playground equipment, rather than apply for grants and hope for the best.
“Earmarking funds has become easier for us. We’ve been able to come up with new ideas like purchasing computers and purchasing software, purchasing library books and finally, purchasing a new playground.”
While School District 70 is currently under strike action, Haahuupayak is open for classes as scheduled. This year, the school has added Grade 7, which has increased the student population accordingly.
Watts said the board anticipates that trend to increase as more parents opt to send their children to Haahuupayak.
“We’re going to have to look at adding space,” he said. “The plan is to create a cultural centre with classroom space integral to it, to accommodate more kids.”
By Saturday afternoon, with the thermometer climbing even higher, most of the posts had been lowered into the ground and a number of the play complexes had been assembled.
Jones said the playground will have a rubberized ground covering to provide added safety for the children.
