‘All in’ for new playground

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This article was published 21/02/2019 (2616 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Thanks to some  hard work from staff, students and parents, Joseph Teres School is one step closer to having a new play structure.

“Our goal is to improve the outdoor playground, which is quite costly,” Jennifer Warren, chair of the Joseph Teres School Parent Advisory Council, explained.

“It’s something we’ve always kind of talked about,” said vice-chair Tiffany Schellenberg, who has been on the parent advisory council for seven years now. “This is the year we figured we will get it done.”

A recent fundraiser, which included selling tickets for a calendar’s worth of prizes, raised nearly $6,000 for the project. As a result, on Feb. 20 principal Ian Grant and vice-principal David Markham made good on a promise they made.

“Our last fundraiser brought in just over $2,000 and we were looking for ways to motivate the kids,” Warren said. “(We) asked the principal to dye his hair blue and eat haggis if the students raised $5,000 with the calendar fundraiser in January.”

True to their word, Grant and Markham kicked off an I Love to Read assembly, which featured a reading from local filmmaker Andrew Wall, with a reading of Robbie Burns’ Address to a Haggis. The pair then unveiled their new hairdos before chowing down on a steaming plate of haggis before a raucous crowd of students and staff.

The project is estimated to cost $154,000. The parent advisory council has now raised approximately 10 per cent of that goal. The next step, Schellenberg said, will be to meet with representatives from the River East Transcona School Division and the City of Winnipeg to come up with a solid plan for the project and start applying for grants.

“We put a design out at our Christmas concert, and asked for feedback,” Schellenberg said. “We want to make sure it’s accessible to wheelchairs as much as possible. We want to make sure those students can utilize it as much as anybody else.”

Last year, the parent advisory council at Joseph Teres School raised the money for a new audio/visual system for the school’s assembly area.

“The kids run most of our assemblies,” Grant explained. “We wanted a system that would work for everybody. They managed to raise about $20,000 towards that project.”

Currently, Joseph Teres School has 360 students. Enrolment has been on the rise over the past five years.

“We’re expecting to increase in population considerably here over the next few years, because we’ll be servicing all the new development north of Transcona Boulevard,” Grant explained. “Joseph Teres housed a student population of around 600 when it first opened as a K-6 school. So we can certainly adjust to the new student population that will come in by reconfiguring our space and staffing. A new play structure would be a part of that adjustment.”

While a specific time line for the project is still up in the air, Grant and Schellenberg agreed it would be realistic to aim for the project to be completed for September 2020.

“It’s a lot of work to get those grant proposals in,” Grant said. 

Sheldon Birnie
Community Journalist

Sheldon Birnie is a reporter/photographer for the Free Press Community Review. The author of Missing Like Teeth: An Oral History of Winnipeg Underground Rock (1990-2001), his writing has appeared in journals and online platforms across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. A husband and father of two young children, Sheldon enjoys playing guitar and rec hockey when he can find the time. Email him at sheldon.birnie@freepress.mb.ca Call him at 204-697-7112

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