The average time a child in the U.S. spends outside every day is just minutes compared to the hours behind a screen. It’s something that officials at the Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit focused on connecting people with the outdoors, want to change, starting with places like St. Paul’s Maxfield Elementary, said Sophie Harris Vorhoff, Minnesota director with the Trust for Public Land.
“Every kid should be able to touch the earth, connect with nature, spend time under trees, have a great playground. So that starts in our schools,” she said.
Vorhoff, along with city and district officials and students at Maxfield Elementary, broke ground Wednesday on a project at the school, located at 380 N. Victoria St., that will become a 2.4-acre community space and schoolyard that includes walking paths, seating, a “micro forest” and pollinator garden alongside the school playground, which was updated last year. The site also will include shaded areas to be used as an outdoor classroom.
Providing community access to all public schoolyards during non-school hours would put a park or green space within a 10-minute walk of nearly 20 million people across the country, according to officials with the Trust for Public Land.
Once the project at Maxfield is completed, approximately 8,000 residents in the area will live within a 10-minute walk of the future green space, which will be open to the public during non-school hours. The school is located in the former Rondo neighborhood.
Gaps in park access
Those at the Trust for Public Land look at a variety of metrics in Minnesota schools to identify partners on projects like the one at Maxfield, examining equity metrics such as health data, where there are gaps in park access and opportunities for climate benefit and stormwater management, Vorhoff said.
As an urban district, many schools within the St. Paul Public Schools are located in areas that border freeways or lack green space, negatively impacting overall health, said SPPS Superintendent Stacie Stanley at Wednesday’s groundbreaking. Those impacts, along with climate change, disproportionately affect the most vulnerable communities, Stanley said.
“SPPS can help remedy these challenges by providing a network of outdoor spaces with playing fields and playgrounds and informal meeting spaces to support our communities,” she said.
The project follows a community-design process, working with students to design the schoolyard, as well as getting community input, said Anna Callahan, a senior program manager with the Trust for Public Land. For Maxfield’s future schoolyard, that means increased shade and seating, as well as addressing stormwater issues.
“And so some of the nature-based improvements, as well as the stormwater improvements, will help with mitigating some of the water movement on site and help with capturing that to prevent both large puddles in the spring and then also icy patches when we get those in the winter,” Callahan said.
Maxfield one of five schools chosen for model
Maxfield — which has been serving students for more than 130 years — is one of five schools in the state that are part of a first cohort where a community schoolyard model is being completed, Callahan said, making it one of the first in the state. The Trust for Public Land has created 350 community schoolyards in the country.
Total cost for the project is estimated to be $1.5 million, with fundraising for its second phase still underway.
Funding support comes from SPPS, Minnesota’s Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund – as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources – the Hardenbergh Foundation, the Donna Herzog Foundation and Xcel Energy.
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