Rethinking schools: Can a playground be a classroom?

The combination of COVID-19 and back-to-school season are making the quest to safely re-engineer our schools much more urgent.

Sharon Danks spent 20 years with the California nonprofit Green Schoolyards America designing outdoor learning spaces that fit existing elementary school footprints and meet a variety of budgets. Now, her COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative is taking off, with volunteer landscape architects and others advising on how to repurpose existing outdoor spaces.

School rooms often can’t accommodate distancing – but with proper seating and shading, playgrounds, and even carports, can be reworked to become safe and inviting classrooms that keep kids learning.

– Donna Scaramastra Gorman, The Engineering 100