S.F. school yards open up for weekend play

Every Friday, thousands of students pour out of San Francisco schools — and for the next two days the playground swings, slides and basketball courts often sit idle on the other side of locked gates.

But youngsters up for a game of four square won’t have to wait until Monday morning anymore. The city and school district will be unlocking the gates at dozens of schools across the city, expanding a program that allows public access to these playgrounds on the weekends.

It is, said Supervisor Mark Farrell, a no-brainer in a city where leisure space is limited and raising families is challenging enough.

“In an urban environment, we need to use every amount of open space to play and be outdoors,” Farrell said. “We cannot do enough to make our city as family-friendly as possible.”

It was nearly five years ago when Farrell, seeking a place to teach his kids to ride a bike on a weekend day, discovered his neighborhood school was locked up.

The politician made a phone call that Monday morning and found out that while the district had created a pilot program in 2007 to open schools on the weekends, it stalled during recessionary cutbacks.

With the training wheels stuck on his children’s bikes, Farrell decided to raise money to make it happen at a lot more schools.

“Some of my fondest memories growing up in San Francisco were playing on the local school yard with my father and friends,” he said. “It was simply a part of a kid’s existence in San Francisco.”

Since 2011, the Shared Schoolyard Project has kept 28 schools open on weekends. Now, another 51 will be added over the next year or two, with private funding covering costs.

While parents and school staff expressed concerns in 2007 that weekend visitors would cause damage to campuses or leave trash behind, those fears have largely been unfounded, Farrell and district officials said.

Anecdotal reports from principals indicate that graffiti and other problems have actually decreased, with the weekend presence of families and neighbors keeping illicit gate-hoppers out, Farrell said.

And, just in case, the program’s budget sets aside money to address any damage. In addition, each participating school gets two playground power washes each year, as well as a $1,000 no-strings grant and another $2,500 to use for weekend programming — like a four-square tournament or a kickball coach.

The money is raised from private donations or grants and goes through the nonprofit Parks Alliance. It covers costs taken on by the city’s parks and public works agencies associated with keeping the school yards open on the weekends.

The program’s annual budget is about $300,000, and that will increase as more schools open. The city will also cover a full-time staffer to oversee the expansion for the school district, said spokeswoman Gentle Blythe.

The district “doesn’t pay anything for the program,” Blythe said. “Over the seven years of the program’s existence, there have only been a handful of incidents of vandalism or theft at schools that were part of the program, and these incidents appeared to take place outside of the program hours.”

The project, she added, has handled all costs to repair damage or replace equipment.

At Cleveland Elementary, an open school yard since 2012, Principal Mark Sanchez said that keeping the playground accessible on the weekends has been “90 percent positive.”

“We have had some times when teenagers will skateboard through the garden area and trample things,” he said.

And, at first, visitors stole the basketball nets. But students made signs asking people not to steal the nets — and none have been taken since, Sanchez said.

“Generally speaking, it’s been positive,” he said, adding that it’s nice to see families out on a Saturday. “Sometimes it’s families teaching their kids to ride bikes, or little toddlers on the play structure.”

School board member Rachel Norton, who is also part of the Parks Alliance, which advocates for the city’s parks, said inaccessible playgrounds make a block look bad.

“There’s a very different feeling to that neighborhood when it’s a big fence with a locked gate,” she said. Kids playing? “It’s a different feeling.”

Expanding the program means more swings and slides and bike rides for city youth, Farrell said.

School yards “are simply great neighborhood resources, and we’re unleashing their potential for families and kids in the neighborhood,” he said. “This is about the quality of life for San Francisco families.”

To learn more

For more information about the Shared Schoolyard Project, go to www.sfsharedschoolyard.org.