Leave it to those with smaller schools and smaller student bodies because it seems to be those who keep finding new ways to make their current surroundings modified.
In Loreburn, not only has the curling been retrofitted to their school, but their school’s playground has outlived its shelf life.
“Our school playground was installed when our Elbow and Strongfield Elementary Schools closed (around 1994) and all schools were amalgamated into a K-12 School in Loreburn,” said Barb Glubis of the LCS Playground Committee. “As you imagine, many kids have played on the playground in those past 27 years and the old wood and fibreglass structure has outlived its life. We started a LCS Playground fundraising committee in the Fall of 2019 and were ready to launch our Fundraising Campaign on Monday, March 19, 2020 with a community supper and BINGO; just as the Provincial Government announced school closures. We made the obvious choice to postpone our event ‘for a few weeks’ until things settled down. Who knew that we would be almost a year before we decided it was time to kickstart this campaign!”
In kickstarting the campaign, the LCS Playground Committee has hit the right note as one of their committee members has a connection to Vancouver. Since then, the work to come up with a plan for Loreburn’s site has broken into two phases.
“We started by contacting a park design company in Vancouver as one of our committee members had a connection there,” said Barb. “We were very fortunate to have them come up with a site design for us pro-bono. Since then, we have been working with a couple of playground equipment companies in Saskatchewan to decide on equipment needs, different options and various budgets to complete our site design. The total budget for this project comes in just over $200,000 and we have broken it into two different phases in hopes that we will be able to start some of the work in 2021 with a completion in 2022. While we know that this is a very aggressive goal, we are confident in our community members and businesses to support us to the best of their abilities. In addition to fundraising, we are applying for many grants in hopes of being the lucky recipients of some much-needed funds.”
Efforts to begin fundraising will involve measures to bring the kids in to the picture, as well as those in the community. The hope is that such activity will bring everyone the number being sought to reach such a monumental achievement.
“Fundraising efforts will begin with a Skate and Jump a Thon to get the kids involved,” said Barb. “Upon approval from SLGA, the Loreburn Rec Board in conjunction with the Line 19 Mulitplex Committee will be firing up the Line 19 Chase the Ace lottery with the Loreburn Rec Board funds being donated to the LCS Playground.”
