Today, the Los Angeles Unified School District has a goal of converting at least 30 percent of every schoolyard to green space, a years-long project that it expects to cost $3 billion. By its own estimate, about 475 schools do not meet that standard and, of them, more than 200 elementary schools have less than 10 percent green space. This analysis does not include school parking lots or truck delivery areas — paved surfaces that are likely to remain that way and raise the temperature around schools.

Webster, after years of waiting, is now on the list of schools to be renovated by the Trust for Public Land. The nonprofit will work with a class of third-graders and landscape architects for the next year to design a new schoolyard. Projects like this can take two to three years to complete, at a cost ranging from $400,000 to as much as $2.5 million, said Danielle Denk, who directs the organization’s schoolyard transformation work. In Philadelphia, most of the money for these projects comes from the water department, which is trying to make the city more capable of absorbing storm runoff.

  • @OpenStars
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    123 days ago

    This will be beautiful. One downside is that it will need more maintenance costs, i.e. you can’t just walk away from it for years at a time, especially if it were somewhere that poison ivy could start to grow. But definitely an uplifting positive direction to be heading in!:-)

    • @variants@possumpat.io
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      113 days ago

      I mean you could. My wife’s school usually let’s the outside of her class become a forest before they chop it all down like every two years. Mainly because they don’t have a landscaper and just equip a janitor with a weed Wacker

      • @OpenStars
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        32 days ago

        That’s still effort every other year. Tbf I don’t know what all is involved in “maintenance” of concrete - I presumed that one could ignore it far easier, but I have nothing with which to back that up:-).

          • @OpenStars
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            42 days ago

            Oh right, but that too - how much maintenance could that “need”, compared to something constantly growing?

        • @OpenStars
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          22 days ago

          Which words - Janitor’s Weed Wacker?

          Still a far cry from Raccoon Sex Dungeon:-)

          Also, I cannot see anything used in the music sphere that could be even remotely misconstrued as being anti-weed. :-P