Mon, Dec 01 2008
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Published June 21, 2008 09:31 pm - Community builds playground Parents, clubs, businesses provide money for school facility in poor neighborhood By Cathy Spaulding Phoenix Staff Writer Sixth-grader Kayla Royse said she didn’t have a decent playground set for all the years she spent at Irving Elementary School.
“I just walk around and be bored during recess,” she said. “I didn’t think I could ever get to see a playground set that was fun.” When Kayla and other Irving students come back to school this August, they’ll have a new set — yellow and Rougher green, complete with humpy slides, towers and spiral ladders. Irving school administrators and Parent Teacher Organization members said hard work and good fortune helped them raise the thousands of dollars to buy and put up the playground set. Irving, however, faced an extra challenge because of its high poverty rate, Irving principal Dr. Pam Bradley said. In 2007, 87 percent of Irving students were on free or reduced lunch. Tony Goetz Elementary, where Bradley used to be principal, had a 60 percent of its students on free or reduced lunch. The district average was 75 percent on free and reduced lunch; the state average, 56 percent. The school also had no parent teacher group at the start of the school year, Bradley said. She said a group of women got together to set one up again. They included Delana Scoggins, president; Tedra Willis, vice president; Charity Royse, secretary and Laura Wiseman, treasurer. The group’s first challenge was to improve the school’s playground. The school, 1100 N. J St., had no basketball goals and concrete where kids played soccer. Bradley said the only pieces kids could play on were monkey bars, which were too big for smaller kids. The school used to have a wooden playground set, but that had been disassembled because kids kept getting splinters. “I heard they had been talking about getting a new set for nine years,” said Bradley, who just finished her first year at Irving. “This time, we didn’t just talk.” The school started with a goal of raising $53,000. However, the PTO had no money, Charity Royse said. “We had some fundraisers that had worked for other people, we tried a garage sale. Hopefully, it will be better planned this year.” Royse said one reason Irving had problems raising money was that the PTO did not have a 501(c)(3) tax number, designating it as a non-profit organization and qualifying it for tax-exempt donations. “We found it was going to take us up to $1,700 to get it,” she said. “We hope to get the status by July.” Wiseman said the school held 19 fundraisers through the year. Area organizations started to help. Masonic Lodge 430 co-hosted a spaghetti supper. The Modern Woodmen of America sponsored a bean dinner. Both organizations matched the money raised, Bradley said. 
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