Boston Schoolyard Initiative (BSI) is a
non profit organization promoting community-driven sustainable development, environmental stewardship, responsible public policy, and outdoor experiential education in the Boston Public Schools.
History
In 1994, the Boston GreenSpace Alliance and the Urban Land Use Task Force approached Mayor Thomas M.
Menino to initiate a dialogue about the state of Boston’s public schoolyards and the possibility of public and private sectors cooperating to revitalize these historically neglected spaces.
Although ad hoc groups around the city were working to improve their local school grounds, projects were taking 5-8 years to complete and all suffered from a lack of capital investment.
The Mayor convened a broad-based Schoolyard Task Force to devise a process that would fund projects and help hasten their completion.
The Boston Schoolyard Initiative (BSI) public/private partnership was formally launched in 1995.
<ref name "Collaborative philantropies"> </ref> The BSI has transformed over 70 schoolyards of Boston Public Schools into active centers for academic learning, creative play, and community use.
250 acres of visible open space have been revitalized and are virtually unrecognizable from their earlier condition.
<ref>http://ksgaccman.harvard.edu/hotc/DisplayOrganization.asp?id=403</ref>
Community Design Process
Work of the Boston Schoolyard Initiative is based on inclusive process.
Participating Schoolyard Friends Groups are made up of volunteers from the neighborhood and the school community, with the help of a paid community organizer, a landscape architect, a project manager, and BSFC.
One design firm noted the involvement of students in the process, “For Students it is important that they take pride in their schoolyard and feel a sense of stewardship, and at many schools they vote on the program or provide drawings with their ideas”.
In addition to the contributing to the actual design and construction of new schoolyard spaces, this inclusive process builds skills and a sense of ownership among Schoolyard Group members that will assist in efforts to sustain capital improvements and ongoing programming.
<ref>http://jhppl.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/33/3/617</ref>
Funding
The City of Boston and local foundations fund this public/private partnership.
In 2006, the City of Boston and the Boston Schoolyard Funders Collaborative (BSFC) agreed to extend the Initiative for another three rounds (rounds 7, 8 and 9), with construction scheduled for the summers of 2008, 2009 and 2010.
The City is allocating $1.8 million a year from their capital budget and the BSFC has pledged $600,000 in capital funds annually.
BSFC is also devoting funds to underwrite teacher development work with the Boston public schools (BPS) to implement experiential schoolyard pedagogies for teachers and students.
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Teaching and Learning
Schoolyards are different than parks and playgrounds.
Their proximity to schools allows for a higher degree of interactivity and they offer the opportunity to combine recreation, creative play, and academic learning creating a new type of educational resource, particularly important on the K-8 the school campus.
<ref>http://www.enviroedboston.org/directory/Lists/Programs/DispFormReader.aspx?ID=9</ref> A student for whom English is a second language, or who is under-performing in a text-based environment, may blossom in an outdoor classroom where hands-on activities are the rule.
For example, “measuring an mapping the schoolyard adds a “real world” application to the study of mathematics.
Planting and caring for a tree adds a living three-dimensional element to biology.
Birdfeeders in the schoolyard inspire observation and classification that is intimate as well as instructional.
No textbook equals the thrill of watching a real bird snatch sunflower seeds from a class-constructed feeder.
Experiential learning is a proven teaching methodology that has groups of students problem-solving and critically thinking in ways that will benefit them throughout their academic and working lives.”
The Future
The Boston Schoolyard Initiative is in the process of evaluation of it achievements in order to set new goals and priorities.
The weaving together of community development, educational innovation, and environmental stewardship strengthens the fabric of a city’s neighborhoods and empowering its residents.
It is necessary to devise systems to sustain both capital improvements and ongoing programming.
In the 1990, few people would include schoolyards as significant parts of Boston’s open spaces.
Parks, playgrounds, urban wilds, and community gardens have long been important to Bostonians, but schoolyards were simply too degraded to register in the mind’s eye.
With efforts of the BSI and others schoolyards are being acknowledged as perhaps our most important urban open space.
Centrally located, open to neighborhood residents, and integrated into the educational system, schoolyards may truly become grounds for celebration.
Awards
ASLA Community Service Award <ref>http://www.asla.org/awards/2003/boston_schoolyard.htm</ref
References==
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==External links
Schoolyards Website[1879] Harvard Greenspace Database Schoolyard Research Urban Context Example of Schoolyard
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