Parents, lawmakers and county leaders across Hawaiʻi have made a recurring request to the education department in recent years: open up school playgrounds and fields for the public when classes aren’t in session.

The ask seemed to be gaining traction at the start of this year, with lawmakers introducing multiple proposals to require the Department of Education to make recreational facilities available to communities. Halfway through the session, however, the Legislature is moving in the opposite direction with a bill to crack down on school trespassing that may also criminalize parents.

Under Senate Bill 2611, families who set foot on school grounds on weekends or holidays could face  without even receiving a warning from police or school administrators. Consequences could include up to a year in jail and $2,000 in fines. The bill passed through the Senate and is now awaiting a hearing in the House. 

Not all after-hours visitors intend to vandalize school campuses, said parent Maya Childress. School playgrounds can be a weekend gathering place for families, especially in communities without city parks in walking distance.

“People are just trying to get their kids out of the house and into a safe and controlled environment,” Childress said. “It’s just making it more difficult.” 

Some school districts on the mainland have gone the other way, opening up their campuses for more public use. For example, in the San Diego Unified School District, people can use many school fields and playgrounds on the weekends as well as in the afternoons. In exchange, the city helps upkeep the campuses.

But two bills to expand the public’s weekend access to Hawaiʻi schools died in the House and Senate Education Committees last month. Rep. Trish La Chica, who authored one of them, said she’s determined to find a compromise that allows families to use campus facilities for recreation, while still addressing schools’ concerns about liability and safety. 

“The perception is that there’s nothing we can do to promote recreation and physical activity,” La Chica said. “I feel like we should be willing to work through the logistics of that to grant more access to our community.” 

Changing Families’ Behavior? 

In recent legislative hearings, principals have raised concerns about worsening vandalism, homelessness and unsanitary conditions on their campuses. Property damage and trash left on campuses put an additional burden on teachers and custodians, and principals say schools need to hold trespassers accountable for damaging school spaces on the weekends.  

“Every Monday morning, my staff is forced to deal with a staggering array of vandalism and biohazards before students can safely step onto campus,” Kaimukī High School Principal Lorelei Aiwohi said in written testimony to the Legislature.

Under the current law, individuals can be charged for trespassing on campuses on the weekends or holidays, but they need to have first received a warning from administrators or law enforcement. No warning is required to charge people trespassing on school campuses at night, between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

DOE doesn’t track the number of calls to the police regarding trespassing after school hours, Communications Director Nanea Ching said.  

If passed, Superintendent Keith Hayashi said in his written testimony, Senate Bill 2611 could protect against harassment and violence against school employees — a growing problem that gained  after a parent assaulted a high school athletic director last year.

Eliminating the warning requirement for trespassers could help schools more effectively address aggressive or unsafe behavior on campus, said Kāneʻohe Elementary Principal Derek Minakami. 

While schools may have cameras and alarm systems installed on campus, Minakami said they don’t always have the 24/7 security needed to catch intruders and call the police. In some cases, he noted, things don’t have to go that far because written warnings to families and community members about trespassing on campus have been enough to deter unwanted behavior. 

At Holomua Elementary in ʻEwa Beach, Principal Christopher Bonilla said he’s hopeful that changing the state trespassing law will discourage the public from entering school campuses on the weekends. If the bill passes, he said, schools and lawmakers would need to clearly communicate the change to their communities to impact people’s behavior.  

“If the public is more aware of this, they’ll think twice,” he said.

But Childress said she’s skeptical that changing the trespassing law will deter families from visiting school playgrounds on the weekends, especially in communities with limited alternatives. Families are drawn to local elementary schools that can offer safe spaces for their kids to play and socialize, she said, and are willing to chance a rare encounter with the police. 

“People are going to still go. They’re going to chance it,” Childress said, adding that she has actually never been approached by police or school administrators when taking her three children to play at ʻAikahi Elementary’s playground on the weekends.

Limited Outdoor Options

Some lawmakers and county leaders have argued that the solution to improving campus safety and community well-being is more public access to schools, not less.

 proposed a four-year pilot program that would have required schools to make their outdoor facilities available for public use on the weekends without fees or permitting applications. It required schools to post signs notifying visitors that the DOE is not responsible for injuries that occur on the weekends.

While DOE already  for vetting public requests to use their campuses, the approval process can be inconsistent across schools, the bill said,  on the issue. Community members also need to have insurance and pay hourly fees covering the costs of utilities, custodial staff and facility rentals.

“The current system for granting access is highly principal-driven, discretionary, and inconsistent across campuses,” the bill said. The measure died in the House Education Committee. 

 can range from $2 for an unlit parking lot to more than $230 for a large, air-conditioned auditorium. Renting a school playfield costs $5 an hour, according to the DOE. 

Opening up campuses to the public for free would remove the bureaucracy communities currently face when trying to access schools, La Chica said, adding that city parks are often overcrowded with sports leagues’ practices and games. 

But Minakami said the application process for facilities ensures that outside activities aren’t overlapping with school events while helping schools hold people accountable if they damage facilities or bring tobacco or alcohol on campus. 

DOE leaders raised similar concerns in their testimony against that bill, arguing that allowing public use of playgrounds and fields could lead to costly repairs. Schools have faced significant damage to their campuses, including vandalism at ʻAikahi Elementary’s playground in 2021 and a fire intentionally set at  in 2023. 

“That’s like managing a park,” said Deputy Superintendent Jesse Souki in a recent legislative hearing about the bill. “That’s a huge amount of energy and resources.” 

La Chica said opening campuses to the public could in fact encourage community members to take better care of campuses. 

“There’s always going to be risk attached to it, but if we open spaces for families, for youth, for neighbors to use responsibly, I feel like we see the opposite of vandalism,” she said. “When the community feels that a space belongs to them, they take care of it.”

More than 20 years ago, state leaders advocated for a similar change — and found a solution at Farrington High School. 

A pilot program in 2005 allowed the City and County of Honolulu to run free exercise programs on Farrington High School’s campus several times a week, inviting students and community members to take free classes such as volleyball, hula and aerobics. 

Under the agreement between the city and DOE, the Kalihi campus was open for community activities after school as well as Saturday mornings. The city provided staff to run the classes, while the school offered the recreational space at no charge. During the pilot, the school did not report any cases of vandalism, Department of Health Administrator Lola Irvin said in a recent legislative hearing. 

Researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi labeled the , with more than 80% of participants reporting they found a safe space to exercise during the pilot and increased their physical activity. But the initiative was short-lived after funding for the city’s exercise classes ran out. 

The Honolulu parks department and DOE have not entered any similar partnerships since the Farrington pilot, although city leaders have pushed for more cooperation between the agencies in recent years. Earlier this year, lawmakers  on behalf of the Hawaiʻi State Association of Counties asking DOE to open its outdoor campus facilities to the public when classes aren’t in session.

Those resolutions have not yet been scheduled for hearings in the House or Senate.

Childress, a mom of three, remains skeptical that state and county agencies will be able to come to an agreement in the near future.  

“If they could get some kind of agreement on paper and expand access to playgrounds on weekends or off school hours, that would be amazing,” she said. “Then we wouldn’t have to jump a fence.” 

Sarah Hess started taking her toddler, Josie, to Mickey Markey Playground in 2010 because she thought it would be a safe place to play after Josie had been diagnosed with lead poisoning.

Hess had traced the problem to the crumbling paint in her family’s century-old home. While it underwent lead remediation, the family stayed in a newer, lead-free house in the Bywater neighborhood near Markey, where Josie regularly played on the swings and slides.

“Everyone was telling us the safest place to play was outside at playgrounds, so that’s where we went,” Hess said.

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Josie’s next blood test was a shock. “It skyrocketed,” Hess said. Josie’s lead levels had leapt to nearly five times the national health standard.

When the soil at Markey was tested in late 2010, it too was found to have dangerously high levels of lead. But the city took no meaningful action to inform Markey’s users or make the park safe. Parents started posting warning signs at the park and flooded City Hall with outraged calls and emails. Holding Josie in her arms, Hess made an impassioned speech to the City Council.

In short order, the city had hired a company to test Markey and other parks, and pledged to fix the lead problem wherever it was found.

“I couldn’t have been more pleased,” Hess said. “They were totally into it. My impression was they were going to make them all lead-free parks.”

But a Verite News investigation conducted over four months in 2025 found that lead pollution in New Orleans parks not only persists, it is more widespread than previously known. Dozens of city parks with playgrounds remain unsafe, including Markey and others that underwent city-sponsored lead remediation in 2011. The city does not appear to have conducted any major remediation or lead testing of parks since that time.

The findings indicate that city officials fell short in their cleanup efforts then, and that a very large number of New Orleans children are exposed to excessive amounts of lead now, said Howard Mielke, a retired Tulane University toxicologist and one of the nation’s leading experts on lead contamination.

“It’s a failed program,” he said. “They didn’t do what they needed to do to bring the lead levels down in a single park.”

Verite News reporters tested hundreds of soil samples from 84 city parks with playgrounds in fall 2025. Adrienne Katner, a lead contamination researcher with Louisiana State University, verified the results. The testing found that about half the parks had lead concentrations that exceed established in 2024 for soil in urban areas.

“I am surprised they haven’t been tested and mitigated,” said Gabriel Filippelli, an Indiana University biochemist who studies lead exposure. “If there’s evidence of kids playing in soils that are as high as [Verite’s testing] described, that’s kind of horrifying.”

Public health researchers and doctors say that children under 6 absorb lead-laden dust more easily than adults, contaminating their blood and harming the long-term development of their brains and nervous systems. There is no known safe exposure level for children, and even trace amounts can result in behavioral problems and lower cognitive abilities.

Find the lead levels at your playground

New Orleans is in financial straits with a of about $220 million, and it’s unclear what priority or resources Mayor Helena Moreno will, or even can, allocate to restart lead remediation efforts. In response to the financial crisis, Moreno has eliminated dozens of positions and plans to one day per pay period to save money. Moreno’s administration did not respond to requests for comment.

The city doesn’t routinely test for lead in parks, said Larry Barabino, chief executive officer of the New Orleans Recreation Development Commission, the agency that oversees most of the city’s parklands. He confirmed the last significant effort to test parks ended in 2011.

He called Verite’s results “definitely concerning” and pledged to work with city departments and local experts to potentially remediate unsafe parks.

“Safety is our number one priority here at NORD,” Barabino said. “If there’s anything that’s a true environmental concern or risk, that’s something that we believe in definitely making sure we take action.”

Andrea Young heard similar pledges 14 years ago. Like Hess, Young had a child who frequented Markey and had high lead levels in her blood. The mothers helped form a community group called NOLA Unleaded that pushed the city to clean up Markey and other parks. Young thought they had succeeded, but said she now realizes that the city had not done enough.

“It makes me question the value of the work that (the city) did, and the safety we felt in letting our kids play there again,” Young said with a trembling voice. “It just sort of shakes me up a little bit, you know?”

Testing New Orleans parks

Verite News conducted soil tests on the city parks that property inventories and maps list as having play structures. Samples were taken from surface soil, which is most likely to come into contact with children’s hands and toys or be inhaled when kicked up during play or blown by the wind.

Lead is typically found in very small amounts in natural soil. The average lead abundance in U.S. soils is 26 parts per million, equivalent to less than an ounce of lead per ton of soil.

Soil samples collected by Verite from New Orleans parks averaged about 121 ppm—nearly five times the national average.

The federal hazard level for lead in soil was 400 ppm , when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden lowered it to 200 ppm for most residential areas and 100 ppm in areas like New Orleans with multiple sources of lead exposure, including contaminated soil, lead paint and .

More of a guide than a mandate, the EPA screening levels can steer federal cleanup actions and are often adopted by state and city governments to inform local responses to lead contamination.

California has long had a much of 80 ppm. Of the New Orleans parks Verite tested, 52 – or about two-thirds – had results that fail California’s standard.

In October, President Donald Trump’s administration rolled back the EPA screening standards. The administration retained the 200 ppm threshold for residential areas but eliminated the 100 ppm level for areas with multiple lead sources.

The administration didn’t dispute the validity of the 100 ppm threshold, but that a single level “reduces inconsistent implementation and provides clarity to decision makers and the public.”

The change, according to Mielke, doesn’t align with the science, which has long shown that children are harmed when exposed to soil with levels below 100 ppm. He was one of several scientists who had pushed for lower thresholds since the EPA established its first screening levels more than 30 years ago.

Mielke said the 100 ppm screening level should still be applied in urban areas, especially New Orleans. The city has a long history of soil contaminated with lead from a combination of sources, including lead-based paint, leaded gasoline and emissions from waste incinerators and other industrial facilities. Lead particles spread easily by wind, eventually settling in the topsoil.

Verite found lead levels above 100 ppm at numerous places that get heavy use by children. Lead contamination more than four times that level was recorded near the slides at Markey, outside a playhouse in Brignac Park near Magazine Street and at a well-worn spot under an oak tree at Desmare Park in Bayou St. John.

Elevated lead levels tended to follow the age of the neighborhood. The city’s older neighborhoods, including the Irish Channel and Algiers Point, had some of the highest lead levels, while Gentilly and New Orleans East, which were developed mostly after the 1950s, tended to be lower, according to Verite’s findings.

The highest lead levels were found at Evans Park in the Freret neighborhood. Beside a low-hanging oak branch, on ground worn bare by children’s play, Verite recorded lead at 5,998 ppm, nearly 60 times the urban soils threshold.

Search all of Verite News’ test results

Verite spoke to more than a dozen parents at playgrounds across the city, and most were surprised at the levels of lead in the parks.

In the Irish Channel, Meg Potts watched her son run around the dusty playground at Brignac. All of Verite’s samples at the park surpassed the threshold the EPA deemed safe for urban areas, reaching nearly 600 ppm.

Potts knew high lead levels existed in the city, but didn’t realize her neighborhood park could be a source of exposure for her son.

“ I’m just thinking about all of this now because he’s had to go in and have his lead tested,” she said. “He’s like right on the cusp of having too high lead.”

The invisibility of lead makes it challenging for parents to manage among other priorities. Meghan Stroh, whose children often play at Markey, said it’s hard for parents to protect their children from every threat, but tackling lead at parks is one way the city could help.

“It’s a concern that I have amidst a myriad of others,” she said while holding her 10-month-old daughter on her hip. “So, it would be nice to have one thing checked off the list.”

Katner, the LSU researcher, said Verite’s results can serve as a starting point for city officials to conduct more comprehensive testing in parks, noting that even a single lead hotspot in a park is concerning.

“ It doesn’t matter where it is in the soil; there’s exposure there,” she said. “The kid playing in that part of the park is going to get the highest dose.”

A legacy of lead

Before the 1970s, lead was nearly everywhere. A that the vast majority of the U.S. population born between 1960 and 1980 was poisoned by dangerously high levels of lead in early childhood. On average, lead exposure has resulted in a loss of 2.6 IQ points for more than half the population through 2015.

Lead pollution from cars spread into areas near roads, especially major thoroughfares, until leaded gasoline was phased out by 1996. Similarly, emissions from trash incinerators and industrial sites contaminated the surrounding soil. New Orleans had at least eight incinerators that blew toxic gases and lead dust over several neighborhoods, including Algiers Point and St. Roch, until they were closed in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Today, the most pervasive source of lead in soil is degraded paint. Lead-based paint was used extensively for homes and buildings until it was banned in 1978. In New Orleans, most of the houses were built before 1980, according to the . As the paint deteriorates, Tulane University epidemiologist Felicia Rabito said it can chip or turn into toxic dust.

“ The leaded paint goes straight into the dust and it goes straight into the soils, which is a major source of exposure for young children in the city,” said Rabito, who studies lead poisoning and other health conditions.

Children under 6 years old are especially vulnerable, in part because they love to stick their hands in their mouths. Rabito stressed that kids don’t have to eat the soil directly to be harmed. Children putting their thumbs in their mouths after playing on a seesaw or eating a dropped Cheerio can be enough.

Even a one-time exposure to contaminated soil can raise the level of lead in a child’s blood, Rabito said. They’re at an even higher risk if they have a calcium deficiency.

”Lead mimics calcium, so the body essentially thinks that the lead is calcium,” Rabito said. After the lead enters the bloodstream, it’s hard to fully remove. Most of it is stored long-term in the body’s bones, accumulating over time and .

Rabito recommended that parents steer clear of contaminated playgrounds because it’s hard to avoid exposure.

The only way to know if a child has lead poisoning is a medical test. By

Louisiana healthcare providers to ensure every child between 6 months and 6 years of age receives at least two blood tests by age 1 and age 2.

But the law did not include a way to enforce those testing requirements, so many providers don’t test, according to a from the Louisiana Department of Health. The screening rate has always been very low in New Orleans, Rabito said. In 2022, fewer than one in 10 children under 6 years old were screened for lead poisoning in the city, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“ There’s not anything that we can say about lead poisoning or lead levels in children in Orleans Parish with any scientific certainty,” Rabito said. “ As you see from your own testing, there are different pockets of contamination depending upon where you’re playing. Parents really need to get their children tested.”

Limited soil testing, patchy fixes

In 2010, Claudia Copeland joined Hess and other Markey regulars in having their kids tested for lead. One of Copeland’s children, born in Germany, had a blood lead level considered normal at the time. But her younger, New Orleans-born child showed elevated levels that set off alarm bells for Copeland, a molecular biologist.

“There really is no safe level, but it was really bad,” she said.

Copeland hurriedly made signs and posted them around the park. “THE SOIL IN MARKEY PARK IS TOXIC!” they blared in big black letters.

“The city was aware, but they just were not doing anything,” Copeland said. “Parents needed to know. We were all so ignorant about what was in the soil. You know, we’re all saying ‘a little dirt never hurt.’”

Outcry from parents prompted the city to first fence off and padlock Markey, and then promise a more comprehensive response.

The New Orleans health commissioner at the time, Karen DeSalvo, said the city should do “everything we can to understand what the risk might be and to remediate it.” But she also appeared to minimize the dangers of lead at city parks, saying other health risks, like the flu, were greater.

“In the scheme of the many public health challenges that kids have, it’s not the greatest challenge, honestly,” DeSalvo in February 2011.

Then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu was more definitive, pledging a swift, far-reaching action.

“The city will take all necessary measures to investigate possible lead contamination in other parks and playgrounds and remediate them as soon as possible,” he said .

Two months later, testing and remediation were completed at several parks. Members of NOLA Unleaded celebrated and brought their kids back to familiar playgrounds.

But Verite’s review of work orders shows that the city’s testing and remediation efforts were limited to a small number of parks. Despite city leaders’ assurances of a broad response, only 16 parks were tested in 2011, according to documents obtained through public records requests.

Mielke and NOLA Unleaded’s members believed most or all of the city’s parks were tested, pointing to Landrieu’s promises and an that reported that the city agreed to “test all of the public parks in the city.”

“I guess I kind of believed that, and then you realize that that’s not actually true,” said Young after learning the city’s testing was more limited than she thought. “If the majority of the parks they tested were high (in lead), what would make them think all the others are fine?”

Landrieu did not respond to a request for comment. DeSalvo, who retired last year as Google’s chief health officer, said “extremely limited resources” forced the city to weigh its response to lead contamination with the many other health threats residents faced.

“We worked to address the range of exposures whenever possible with the resources we could muster,” she said.

Of the 16 parks the city tested, only two – A.L. Davis in Central City and Norwood Thompson in Gert Town – had levels below 400 ppm, the federal threshold at the time, and were deemed safe by Materials Management Group, or MMG, which was and still is the city’s environmental consultant. One park, Evans in the Freret neighborhood, was found to have lead levels as high as 610 ppm but wasn’t remediated for reasons not made clear in testing documents and progress reports submitted by MMG. Thirteen parks, including Markey, underwent remediation after testing showed the properties exceeded the 400 ppm threshold that MMG used to determine soil hazard levels.

Fourteen years later, Verite’s testing found A.L. Davis and Norwood Thompson have comparatively low lead levels, although A.L. Davis had one sample slightly above the 100 ppm threshold.

Evans, which did not undergo remediation despite unsafe lead levels in 2011, had the highest lead reading of all soil samples collected by Verite. Alongside a low-hanging oak branch, on ground worn bare by children’s play, Verite recorded lead at 5,998 ppm, a level more than twice that of Verite’s second-highest sample, taken at Soraporu Park in the Irish Channel.

In 2011, MMG recommended remediation at Evans, including installing a fabric layer topped with clean soil in three areas, including the northeast corner where Verite collected the 5,998 ppm sample. MMG noted in a 2015 progress report that it had not performed the work, but the firm did not explain why.

MMG did not respond to requests for comment.

Documents obtained by Verite show that the city’s remediation efforts focused on covering patches of contaminated soil rather than the comprehensive treatment Mielke recommended to city leaders in 2011. Mielke had urged the city to fully cover play areas with clean soil, a strategy his research showed was highly effective in reducing lead exposure.

In 2010, Mielke led an effort to reduce lead exposure at 10 child care center playgrounds in New Orleans. He and his team covered the entire footprint of each playground with water-pervious plastic fabric and then six inches of Mississippi River sediment from the Bonnet Carre Spillway, a source of clean, cheap and easily accessible soil. Lead levels fell, with most playgrounds testing below 10 ppm.

The remediation at city parks also used fabric and soil layers, but the coverings were mostly limited to areas with lead levels above 400 ppm, leaving many hazardous areas exposed. Testing and remediation reports obtained by Verite typically show soil capping in only two or three spots, with most of each park remaining untreated.

The remediation at Comiskey Park in Mid-City, for instance, was limited to a 200-square-foot circle in a soccer field and a 400-square-foot strip along a basketball court. No remediation was done near the playground, where Verite’s testing detected lead levels between 155 ppm and 483 ppm.

At Easton Park in Bayou St. John, the 2011 remediation covered four areas totalling about 4,700 square feet, but the park’s playground was left untouched. Verite measured four samples around the playground that exceeded the 100 ppm threshold, including 1,060 ppm and 603 ppm readings near Easton’s swing set.

The soil cover at Markey was more extensive than in other remediations, stretching across much of the park’s playground and shaded picnic area. But Verite’s testing found high levels of lead in the remediated area, including two samples above 200 ppm and one just above 400 ppm.

“That’s kind of shocking,” Copeland said. “At Markey, the kids play everywhere, and in the sandy areas, they really dig down. I’ve seen holes going almost three feet down, like they’re playing at a beach. They could be getting into contaminated soil and distributing it around.”

Mielke was surprised to learn that the remediation results were far more limited than he recommended. He was blunt in his assessment of the work.

“They worked on too small an area, and they should have been using … large amounts of soil and covering over large areas,” he said.

Hess, a New Orleans native who recently moved to Colorado, said failing to deliver on projects is all too common in New Orleans, a city infamous for chronic dysfunction and mismanagement.

“It’s so sad to have done such a shit job,” she said. “But that’s so New Orleans. I’m sorry. I don’t live there anymore, but it still makes me sad.”

A roadmap for cleanup?

Barabino, the recreation district CEO, said he would share Verite’s results with city project managers and MMG.

“It’s definitely concerning if it’s at the level that’s considered a true risk of threat, and we would get it to (the) capital projects (administration) immediately to get MMG out there, so we could take the steps needed to remediate and make those areas and grounds safe for our kids and families to use,” Barabino said.

Filippelli said the city should conduct comprehensive testing of every park and do regular checkups. But because lead contamination in New Orleans parks is extensive and city leaders are struggling to close a large budget deficit, Filippelli recommends that the city remediate the worst parks first.

He and Mielke don’t believe the city must take the route of full remediation, which involves digging up lead-tainted soil and trucking it to a hazardous-waste landfill. That’s very costly and is usually unnecessary if a park is properly capped with clean soil, Filippelli said.

Verite obtained cost estimates for 10 of the 13 parks targeted for remediation in 2011. The total cost was $83,000 in 2011, or about $120,000 today. The work covered more than 1.3 acres across the 10 properties. Compared with similar remediation efforts described by Mielke and Filippelli, the city’s remediation efforts were very expensive. Filippelli estimates that similar work can be done for about $20,000 per acre — about a fifth of what was spent to remediate just over an acre at New Orleans parks.

Evans, Markey and many other parks with high lead levels have about an acre of open soil or grass that could be capped for about $20,000. Some parks with the biggest lead problems are the smallest in size. Soraporu Park, which scored the second-highest lead levels in Verite’s testing, would need about a half-acre of coverage. Union and Brignac parks, each less than a quarter acre, could be capped for about $5,000, according to Filippelli’s rough estimates.

Remediation should be coupled with efforts to reduce contamination from nearby sources, primarily old houses, Rabito said.

“When you clean up soil, you’re not going to do it much good if you haven’t identified what’s contaminating the soil,” she said. In many cases of recontamination, the culprit was a nearby house that was shedding lead paint.

“Which means the soil was clean for a hot minute before it got recontaminated,” she said. “So, we need to make sure that those homes are cleaned up and maintained in a lead-safe way.”

Cleaning up New Orleans parks will also likely require sustained public pressure, said the parents involved with the lead issue in 2011.

“I was not intending to kick butts or make anybody look bad,” said Copeland of her efforts to alert parents about the dangers at Markey. “But nothing would have happened unless all these parents were calling in to the city.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

When it comes to providing play opportunities to children with disabilities, not all playgrounds are created equal. On most playgrounds in the United States, complex play structures with lots of stairs and uneven ground coverings like woodchips or gravel make play inaccessible to kids who depend on mobility aids like wheelchairs or walkers. Traditional swings or narrow slides are inaccessible to kids who need a caregiver’s support or the extra safety feature of a harness to use them.

While all new or renovated playgrounds stemming from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), ADA compliance is only a bare minimum standard. An ADA-compliant playground might have an accessible entrance and transfer stations — spaces where a child in a wheelchair can pull themselves onto a play structure. But even with those features, many kids will still find themselves relegated to only parts of the playground and unable to enjoy many of its play features. The result is that crucial play opportunities remain limited or even unavailable to the disabled kids in the United States.

Recognizing the limits of traditional playgrounds, some designers and city administrators have begun making efforts to go beyond basic access and ensure that more kids with various disabilities are included in playground design — through a philosophy of radical inclusion.

“There’s [always] a strong focus on ramps and stairs,” says Nathan Schleicher, lead playground designer at , an organization that designs and builds custom playgrounds. “Ramps, stairs, and surfacing ended up being what define [an accessible] play space. But none of those things are play elements. We can do better than ramps, stairs, and surfacing. We can do better to be inclusive.”

A on St. Pete Pier in St. Petersburg, Florida, is an award-winning example of inclusive playground design. For the team behind the project, building an inclusive space meant making it “wheelchair accessible from bottom to top,” explains David Hugglestone, Senior Capital Projects Coordinator at the City of St. Petersburg.

The playground at St. Pete Pier has a mythical ocean and beach theme, complete with wooden sea turtles, larger-than-life starfish, and a pink and yellow kraken. “The design, from the beginning, included play opportunities both inside and underneath things like the kraken — its tentacles and its head,” says Hugglestone. “You can crawl into and under it. If you’re able to climb, you can climb the exterior of it. But even kids who may be in a wheelchair can be pushed in underneath.”

Jennifer Allen says that when her family visited the playground on vacation earlier this year, her 5-year-old son, who uses a wheelchair, navigated it easily. “It was a safe place for him to play tag or other running sports,” she says. Her two other kids, ages 4 and 9, loved the playground, too. For the Allens, “an inclusive playground means family play, [giving] my kids the opportunity to play together like siblings should.”

As cities focus on making playgrounds more inclusive, they’re also making them more inviting and more natural. The one-of-a-kind themed playground in St. Petersburg is also an excellent example of a welcoming community space. It has ample meeting places, complete with colorful oversized beach chairs for families to gather and lounge in, and was built using lots of natural materials, from its wood play structures to its rope climbing zones.

“The kids loved it and were wowed when they saw all the various spots to play on,” says Tonya Whitten, a local mother of three, whose 9-year-old and 5-year-old fell in love with the St. Pete Pier playground when the family first visited. While the older kids played, Whitten rested in a seating area with her 5-month-old baby. She says she looks forward to coming back as her youngest grows to take advantage of the scaled play zones that make the playground suitable for children of all ages.

Across the country in San Francisco, access, inclusion, and the incorporation of natural elements have gone hand in hand. There, , a partnership between the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and the San Francisco Parks Alliance, is hard at work transforming thirteen of the city’s most timeworn parks. Seven of the thirteen parks have been completed thus far, with the remaining six scheduled for completion by 2022. The renovated parks boast smooth surfaces for safety, accessible swings and sandboxes, double-wide slides, and abstract play structures built from natural materials.

The shift toward inclusive playgrounds has happened thanks in large part to collaborative and community-led design processes. “The most successfully designed playgrounds, in my experience, that tackle challenging accessibility issues, tackled them very early on in the design,” says Susanna Fraker, a project manager with the San Francisco Parks Alliance.

In San Francisco, tackling questions about accessibility meant partnering with an ADA coordinator and hosting a series of meetings where community members could give input on playground design throughout the process.

Similarly, in St. Petersburg, the city partnered with the local (CAPI), a group committed to ensuring the voices of the disability community are represented in city projects.

“The committee was asked to review the design of the playground and all equipment and features and provide input and ideas,” with the goal of ensuring “equal access, equal participation and equal enjoyment” to all members of the St. Petersburg Community, explains Lendel Bright, ADA and Diversity Coordinator at the City of St. Petersburg and liaison to CAPI.

The challenges that both cities faced were what Fraker calls the “push and pull” of balancing the goal of radical inclusion with things like space and budget constraints. Wide pathways or transfer stations that make playgrounds maneuverable for wheelchair-users also take up a lot of space. Added accessible entrances and the one-of-a-kind equipment that make inclusive playgrounds so wonderful can also be expensive. “The fun part,” says Fraker, is when “given the space and budget constraints, designers come up with creative and fully-integrated solutions. It’s not a burden to the project. If anything, it adds play value.”

Schleicher says there’s also a growing understanding that playgrounds are important community gathering places and vital to childhood development. Investing in them just makes sense. “We put that investment into our landscape architecture and architecture. But we don’t necessarily put that investment in our children’s architecture and our children’s spaces. But there is a growing awareness that we can do better.”

At the playgrounds in both St. Petersburg and San Francisco, efforts to ensure radical inclusion have been more than worthwhile. “The minute we opened up [the St. Pete Pier Playground] and saw kids playing on it, it was worth every penny,” says Hugglestone.

“I think it is extraordinarily wonderful that there is a playground for every child [in St. Petersburg],” says Whitten. “It is a very rewarding feeling to see your child having the time of their lives playing on a playground and every child deserves that.”

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