Sequoia parents, district and students outline $100K playground renovation and outdoor classroom plan

Sequoia Elementary parents and district staff detailed a collaborative playground improvement project at the Mount Diablo Unified School District board meeting Wednesday night, saying the work will add shade, an outdoor learning area, replacement play components and repairs to tired surfacing.

The presentation came from members of the Sequoia Parents Association and school leaders. Elise Galletto, president of the Sequoia Parents Association, said the project began as a fundraising effort to add shade and expanded into multiple site improvements when district staff walked the campus with parents and teachers.

Why it matters: The project combines parent fundraising and district deferred-maintenance resources to extend amenities used daily by roughly 600 students. Board members and school leaders said the upgrades are timed to minimize classroom disruption and create an outdoor instructional space tied to classroom learning.

Details of the project and funding - Scope: New shade/paved outdoor learning area under existing solar panels, picnic tables, refresh and selective replacement of existing playground pieces, a new climbing structure, upgraded basketball hoops, an additional tetherball pole and resurfacing/soft-surface repairs. - Costs discussed: the presenters said a full replacement could have cost about $300,000 but a renovation model would be “around a hundred thousand dollars.” District deferred-maintenance funds were expected to cover about $10,000 of that; the Sequoia Parents Association indicated about $97,000 raised toward the larger share. Picnic tables were estimated at about $25,000; asphalt paving estimates ranged from $35,000 to $60,000 depending on required subsurface work. - Timeline: organizers said work is planned around spring break, acknowledging some work will extend beyond that week.

Student involvement and curriculum tie-ins Teachers and parents described how staff used a third-grade class as a “lab” to plan picnic table layout while aligning activities to the International Baccalaureate curriculum. Third-grader Nora Jazira told the board, “We need enough picnic tables to seat 200 students at a time,” and described the hands-on measuring, modeling and math used to calculate table counts and layout.

Site and community conditions Presenters noted recurring mud under the solar-panel area caused by sprinklers and past flooding; drainage work is included in the paving estimates. The presenters said picnic tables would be anchored into the new asphalt but designed for removal if a future flood cleanup were necessary. They also said the city of Pleasant Hill is working on broader mitigation to reduce flood risk.

Quotes from presenters - “Our playground really had no shade,” Elise Galletto said, describing the multi-year effort to raise funds and find a district solution that preserved useful existing play equipment. - Superintendent-designated staff and the principal described using the outdoor space to support instruction and to address a specific CAASPP geometry/area learning need by having students design table layouts as a real-world problem.

What’s next Presenters asked the board to note the project as an example of site-level collaboration and said they will coordinate construction scheduling with vendors and the district maintenance team. Parents noted that successful collaboration at Sequoia may serve as a model for other campuses seeking to pair parent fundraising with district maintenance resources.

Ending Board members praised the cross-team collaboration and student involvement; no formal board action was required for the presentation.