DPAC Playground Committee’s Terms of Reference
The following are guidelines that were discussed at DPAC’s Playground 101 Information Night held on November 25, 2013.
Presenters: Karen Moore and Brie Walmsley
Guest Speaker: Tristan Schaufler, Director of Facilities, SBO
How to start:
Contact one of the playground companies for a very rough quote so that you have a ball park number to work with.
Have PAC exec meeting to work out budget. Will PAC pay or will you be fundraising? Who will do the work? PAC cannot do this alone!
Hold PAC meeting about playground, talk dollars, events, people to run each event, timeline-when you want playground on site.
Meet with school board maintenance/facilities dept to determine what they will do for you, site prep etc… will they be ok with parent build if you want to do that route?
Fundraising:
Grants, some ideas as to where to find them, which are the ones we applied to.
Any grants that need charity number must be applied for under name of Langley School District Foundation.
Send letter out to solicit donations – telling our story. Don’t be afraid to ask!
Just send to random companies, anyone you can think of. Use your local community.
Pick the company:
Following are some of the available choices:
- Habitat (www.habitat-systems.com)
- Rec Tec (www.rectecindustries.com)
- Swingtime (www.swingtimedistributors.com)
- Blue Imp (www.blueimp.com)
- Suttle (www.gametime.com/suttle)
- Natural Impressions Outdoor Play (www.naturalplaygrounds.ca)
To choose layout/components – choose 8-10 and have kids vote on top 4 favourites.
Involve parents, they are helping pay. Kids could choose colours.
Send out for tender, have companies compete, give deadline. Make sure companies know they are competing with each other.
When mock ups and quotes come back, bring exec together to review and make final decision.
Building:
Once contractor is picked, you will receive list of special equipment, get to work on this right away. May need auger, or cement, or gravel.
Start on list of volunteers, need approx. 20 per day. We used about 10 to unwrap/set up first day, then about 20 both Sat and Sun for build.
Plan on long days – 10-12 hour days.
Plan food for your volunteers, go to local community, someone may want to sponsor and be part of this, someone for coffee and donuts in the morning, someone for lunch.