Report: Winthrop Playground Update

Transcript (~3 min @ 12:44)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 12:44 Speaker 5: Just wanted to give a quick update, hopefully with the Winthrop playground. I know some of you may have received some communication from me as you are part of the Winthrop community, but we did send an update to the Winthrop community specifically and just wanted to share it publicly. This Winthrop stakeholder group met at the end or middle of June, I guess June 18th, to discuss the plans for our new school playground. And this group will remain involved throughout the entire process. Our goal has been to have a new playground ready for our students as close to the start of the school year or the fall as possible. This stakeholder group is made up of a variety of voices from across the Winthrop community, and it includes Ken Kelley, Dr. Tracy, who represent the school leadership, Jim Troupe from DPW, Rob Carrillo from Parks and Rec. And in addition, we're guided by the direct input of two Winthrop teachers and a few dedicated Winthrop parents, including a city councilor, Winthrop PTO, and school council representatives. So this group has finalized the design process to meet our students' needs. We selected the model, the color scheme, and have been able to secure a contract with a vendor who can deliver our quality work within our very tight timeline. We will be utilizing the same footprint and location for the structure because we really need to avoid any extensive infrastructure work and we don't want to relocate any underground utilities. And this really allows us to move quickly, meet the needs of students, put a playground in place quickly, and also stay within our budgetary guidelines. The factory has scheduled equipment to ship the week of August 31st. They will start installation the first week of September, and we expect about two weeks for installation. And then hopefully we can get in the resurfacing and all of those kind of pieces. All of that's obviously weather dependent. We know what it looks like to live in New England, so fingers crossed on all of those things. But we are moving as swiftly as possible to ensure that our students have a great space as early as possible, and I'll continue to share the process as it unfolds.

▶ 14:48 Speaker 1: Great. Any questions about the Winthrop update? Yeah, Ms. Leo.

▶ 14:53 Speaker 3: I was just hoping, Superintendent Berman, you could share a little more about the reactions from families, stakeholders, as you've shared out some of these updates, just so we have a sense of how the community is experiencing.

▶ 15:05 Speaker 5: Yeah. I don't always get a lot of responses to my emails or maybe sometimes I do. In this case, I think we've just gotten a lot of thank you. I think we're being really thoughtful in our planning and working with some very specific families and Winthrop families and identifying a color scheme that resonates with the community, and some different pieces. So I think people are excited to have a space again that feels fresh and new and that we can continue to use.

▶ 15:35 Speaker 1: Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, before we go on to the next one, I just want to point out we made a slight mistake in the agenda. We will not be voting on number four, even though it says vote. So I'll turn it over to the superintendent, no vote tonight.