Raetihi's under-cover playground opened

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 15, Issue 694, 8 July 1997, Page 5

Raetihi's under-cover playground opened

Nancy Winter, QSM, offi cially opened Raetihi School's allweather playground at a special ceremony last Wednesday. The school has built a large cover over the play area in between two blocks of classrooms to create an open play area that will be dry all winter and out of ultra-violet light's harmful rays in summer. School board of trustees chairperson Patricia Stout said they needed a place where the children could play, safe from the weather. "For eight months of the year our children spend the vast majority of their play time in the classroom," said Mrs Stout. "This consequently affects the behaviour and temperament of both the children and their teachers. With today's classrooms of 30-plus children, the strain can be enormous, which does not create a good learning environment." School principal Grant Fountain said that in the five weeks it has been up the children had been really enjoying it. He explained it was so popular that they now had a small problem of timetabling sports and lunchtime use so everyone gets a share. He said it would also prove useful for the

school's cultural festival in September and for the school gala and would be available for use by community groups. Covered play areas are now common in schools, but not on the scale of Raetihi's project and it is the first in the Wanganui region, Ministry of Education property manager Leon Carter explained at the opening. "It may be the only one in our region but it won't be the only one for long," he said. The cover is a light-

weight structure, 33 metres long by 1 6 metres wide and 15 metres high. The framing is of zinc aluminium alloy, similar to that used in some garden sheds, and 70 per cent of the roofing material is clear to let in sunlight. The structure will cost $96,000, with half the money coming from the Ministry of Education, $20,000 from the Lotteries Commission, $10,000 from the Dudding Trust and $5000 from the Raetihi School Centenary Committee.