New playground at St. Marguerite a community effort

Courtesy photo/St. Marguerite School

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Members of the St. Marguerite School community work on the installation of playground equipment as the sun rises.

TOOELE — It took a community to build a playground for St. Marguerite School.

Until this year, the only playground equipment at the school was sized for preschoolers, leaving older students with little to do at recess.

A possible solution arose 16 months ago, when officials at a nearby public school that was being demolished offered its playground equipment to St. Marguerite Principal Lorena Needham.

Needham asked the parish and school community if they would be willing to help move the equipment. The answer was yes, “so we went over and we tore down the equipment, pulled it out of the ground, and all we had to do was get it over the fence,” she said. “From that day forward they met almost weekly to develop a plan to meet with the safety officials in the county and then to find the equipment and the talent to lay out the playground and make it happen.”

One of the hardest tasks was finding the material to fill in the hole after the equipment was installed, she said. “Because there is so much construction going on in Tooele County, it was very difficult for us to find sand, soft dirt and mulch to fill the pit with.”

Also, the material was brought over time in multiple truckloads, so people were needed on various occasions “to move these mountains of mulch and things into the pit to get it safe again. It was quite the effort,” she said.

In addition to the playground equipment from the public school, St. Marguerite also has obtained a swing set for older children, and installed a concrete pad with stencils for different games, including basketball. A second, smaller pad is set with tables for an outdoor classroom, and there is a walking path with instructions for different exercises.

“The whole idea is that … we can have an all-weather, all year round playground area for students,” Needham said, adding that she was overwhelmed by the generosity of the community. In addition to those who worked to install the equipment, many people donated financially or gave materials. For example, one parent donated all new nuts and bolts for the playground equipment because the old ones tended to get stripped when they were removed during disassembly. Another community member, Cris Wilcox, donated the use of certain construction equipment that they couldn’t find elsewhere, Needham said.

“If it wasn’t for his generosity in moving the rock, moving the dirt, moving the mulch and then sculpting the land here just most recently, we … simply could not have done the project,” she said.

With the playground equipment installed, all that remains is “making it look pretty” by putting in grass and the sprinkler system, Needham said. She hopes that will be complete in time for a visit in late September from the accreditation team from Western Catholic Educational Association.

 Even if the playground area isn’t pretty, the community effort that went toward the installation will be part of the accreditation report, Needham said. “One of the hallmarks of success (for the accreditation process) is the involvement of the community. If you don’t have everyone involved in the work of the accreditation study …  then you’re not going to have a very successful accreditation.”