New playground unveiled at Yuma Elementary
GATE CITY, Va. (WJHL) — Yuma Elementary School unveiled its new playground on Friday after 10 years of fundraising.
“We have been fundraising for about ten years to replace the playground,” Principal Valarie Babb said. “Some of the parts were original to 1968, so we’ve been fundraising for a long time and we got it in about a month ago. But due to state testing things, we were not able to have an official kind of ribbon cutting. So we wanted to back the community and everyone out to celebrate this great day with us today.”
The new playground’s name, the “Cleveland Playground,” comes from 1915.
“We’re calling it the Cleveland Playground because in 1915, all these grounds near this area was Cleveland School,” Babb said. “And we wanted to call it the Cleveland Playground in honor of the students and the faculty and staff and teachers that attended that school.
Babb said a slide from 1968 was able to be repurposed to the back of the playground in the shade.
“Community has been very passionate about our slide from 1968,” Babb said. “We actually repurposed it to the back playground in a safe area that’s in the shade because it was a metal slide.”
Babb said the new playground gives students more options to play compared to the old one.
“Our teachers have noticed the difference. Kids come in a lot [more tired] and sweatier because there’s so much to play on here and do as compared to the old stuff,” Babb said. “We had one slide and maybe some pull up bars and monkey bars and that was kind of it. So, so now they have so many more things. We have three slides and a lot of things to climb and do and twirl.”
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