Bigfork students, PTA raise money for playground
Bigfork Elementary School students are taking strides to build a new playground — quite literally.
Over the past five years the pupils have raised $45,000 toward new equipment through an annual fun run, earning pledges for laps completed. They are still $30,000 away from their goal, but Parent Teacher Association board members don’t want the students to have to wait any longer for the facilities they’ve worked for, and are looking to the community to help bridge the gap.
“We just felt like, oh my gosh we can’t do this one more year without the kids seeing this playground project started,” PTA Board Secretary Jennifer Bach said. “They’ve been so committed to going out every year and running those laps and raising this money.”
The new play area, to be constructed on a grassy hill southwest of the school, will include a slide, rock-climbing platform, parkour obstacle and an amphitheater, among other features. In the winter months, the hill is often used as a sliding area by the students, which “becomes this muddy mess,” Bach said.
The new equipment will be an addition to the existing playground, located in the heart of town on Grand Drive. Bach said the current play area has incurred significant wear and tear, thanks to high usage by local children, visitors and after-school programs.
“Our equipment was really kind of run down and falling apart,” she said. “It was time to grow and expand it because it just wasn’t fitting the needs of the age groups of kiddos that were using it.”
In 2015, the PTA Board recognized the need for new facilities and organized the first fun run to begin raising money. Teachers got together to brainstorm specific elements of the park, based on feedback they’d heard from students over the years.
Third-grade teacher and PTA liaison Jill Morley said climbing equipment was a top priority along with a playground that would fit the needs of students from kindergarten through fifth grade.
“This is a playground not only for our school community, but for the larger community,” she said.”We want something that … looks nice and will be fun for the kids to play on.”
The board has since been working with the school district and multiple engineers to ensure the feasibility and safety of their proposed design.
“It’s just a great group of really hard-working parents that have spent years fundraising and putting this all together,” Bigfork School District Superintendent Matt Jensen said. “We’re blessed to have a great group of parents that are willing to do that.”
The project will be broken up into two phases: the first will cost $75,000 and will include preparation of the site, a slide, climbing support structure, handrails and landing area. The embankment slide will be set along the curve of the hillside, which reduces the risk of falling, and will also feature a tunnel beneath it for children to climb through. The second phase, estimated at $25,000, will be comprised of the amphitheater, climbing wall, parkour obstacle, and Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant swing.
The amphitheater will be used as outdoor classroom space and will serve as a venue for creative activities, “to accommodate the student who wants to be more theatrical, more pretend play, as opposed to being on a piece of equipment,” Bach noted.
The school district will also contribute an undetermined amount of funds toward the second phase of the playground project, Jensen said. He explained that funds for projects like the playground come from year-end monies which he said had already been earmarked for other efforts and are often diverted to higher-priority needs such as a new sidewalk or boiler.
Bach is confident the PTA will be able to raise the money in time and have already purchased the $25,000 slide, set to arrive later this month. The association plans to raise the remaining funds by reaching out to local businesses for support.
“The slide gets delivered on the 29th of July so this project has got to go. We’ve set ourselves up in a way that we just have to make it happen one way or another,” she said.
Their goal, Bach said, was to have phase one of the playground off the ground in August and completed by Sept. 3 when school starts.
“With Bigfork being an unincorporated community, it’s a unique situation so we all come together for different causes or whenever there’s a need — when the high school needed to be remodeled, or the parking lots that’s being built — we all just kind of rally together,” Bach said. “[The community support] is pretty amazing and remarkable, and the people who have a heart for Bigfork and just continue to make it the great place that it is.”
Reporter Mackenzie Reiss may be reached at 758-4433 or mreiss@dailyinterlake.com.