The Brown School has received funds to renovate its playground and surrounding exterior spaces. ~ Photo courtesy of Ryan Williams

By Fernando Cervantes Jr.

In 2017, the Brown School PTA and its members were awarded funds by the City of Somerville to develop landscape design plans for the renovation. After approval from the city in late 2021 the playground was slated to be rebuilt this past summer.

The surface, mainly made of concrete, is full of cracks and other imperfections leading to countless injuries to the students.

Summer has come and gone but the playground is still in disrepair and children continue to trip and fall. As reported by the Times back in February, Somerville Public Schools and the city government planned to fix the area during the summer, but when children returned to school, the playground had not been rebuilt.

“The cracks are still there, the injuries are definitely going to happen.” Sean Becker, member of the PTA, said.

After a last-minute effort to improve the surface, children were met with a sticky mess, according to parents at the Brown school. The sealant used to fill cracks at the playground had not been allowed to set. Children who played on it were covered in the substance from head to toe.

The city provided an update on the current situation at the school in a virtual meeting last Wednesday. Here officials laid out a plan where the Brown school’s playground would be renovated in the summer of 2023. The plans involve repaving the surface of the playground. They would also add new storm drains, basketball courts, and surface graphics and improve drainage.

In an interview, members of the PTA were critical of the meeting format and reasoning for delaying the project.

“We’re just really disappointed with the meeting format. There was no discussion portion of it, it was a one-way communication from the city to us,” Ryan Williams, president of the PTA, said. “They didn’t seem to express any sense of urgency behind the need to repair the playground.”

In a statement to The Somerville Times, city officials explained their reasoning for moving the renovations at the Brown school to 2023.

“Because of the school needs and lack of indoor space at the Brown school, the school has asked for construction to begin in June 2023 as soon as students are released for summer break,” according to a city spokesperson.

According to Jackie Carrington, a member of the Brown school PTA for three years, the issue of the playground is bigger than the school itself.

“We had a great turnout, a lot of new parents, a lot of kindergarten parents. I think they lost a lot of trust in the city, it was disappointing,” Carrington said.