Lower Merion is considering inclusive playgrounds. A mother of a child with a disability says it’s a ‘civil rights issue.’

As she began considering where to send her 5-year-old son for kindergarten, Sana Garner decided to visit the Lower Merion School District’s elementary schools — specifically, the playgrounds.

Garner’s son, Apollo, has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair and gait trainer. Garner immediately noticed that the playground at the elementary school he was designated to attend was on woodchips that he wouldn’t be able to roll over. So were nearly all of the district’s 14 playgrounds.

“I made a video where I was basically crying — ‘This is breaking my heart. My child can’t play; he’ll be separated,’” Garner said, recalling a post she made to her Instagram last summer.

Since then, Garner has enlisted fellow parents to press Lower Merion’s school board to make the playgrounds at its six elementary schools fully accessible: not just by leveling the playground surfaces, but updating structures to add ramps so that all kids could use the equipment.

The district is now working on a request for proposals for a “comprehensive study” of the existing playgrounds, and “designs and associated construction costs for inclusive playgrounds,” said spokesperson Amy Buckman. “That information is needed so the board can properly consider budgeting for the construction of such facilities.”

At a school board meeting last month, Lower Merion’s interim superintendent, Larry Mussoline, recommended that the district bring in an architecture firm to advise on the options.

“There’s a right way and a wrong way” to do this, said Mussoline, a former Haddonfield Schools superintendent who noted experience with an inclusive playground project there. He said that if Lower Merion were to update all elementary playgrounds for inclusivity, “we’re talking about a fairly hefty cost.” (According to Haddonfield administrators, Tatem Elementary has an “all-inclusive” playground for older elementary students renovated in 2019 for more than $200,000; a playground for younger students at the school was renovated to be “more inclusive” in 2023 for $118,000, with funds donated by the school’s PTA.)

An October presentation by Lower Merion administrators to the school board’s facilities committee evaluating the state of the district’s elementary school playgrounds estimated the cost of renovations to surfaces and equipment at a little under $3 million. It’s not clear, however, what equipment upgrades that cost would cover; for instance, the estimates for Merion Elementary’s playgrounds don’t include new equipment, though the existing play structures don’t have wheelchair-accessible ramps.

Garner sees ramps as critical. “Fundamentally, what do children want to do? They want to get up in the structure,” she said.

Accessible playgrounds are “a civil rights issue,” Garner said, and many school playgrounds fall short. While visiting playgrounds in about half-a-dozen nearby suburban districts, considering where she might send Apollo if not Lower Merion, Garner said she found one fully inclusive playground, for K-2 students at a school in the Springfield Township School District.

Often, playgrounds may have some rubber surfacing and options for students in wheelchairs to access on the ground — like musical equipment — but “you’re segregated to play only there,” Garner said. “There’s very much this separate-but-equal play.”

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act — along with federal laws ensuring that students with disabilities have access to a free and appropriate education and prohibiting discrimination — “schools need to take steps to ensure that students with disabilities are able to participate in all aspects of school,” said Margie Wakelin, a senior attorney at the Education Law Center in Philadelphia.

That includes recess, Wakelin said — which is “a really important part of the school experience.” Students aren’t just playing, but developing social relationships and communication skills that go far beyond the playground, she said.

Wakelin said an inaccessible playground built before the ADA’s passage in 1990 may not violate the law. But when renovations are planned, the law’s provisions are “typically triggered.”

She noted that the availability of facilities across a district can come into play. The fact that some Philadelphia school buildings date to 1920 and may not be accessible for students with some disabilities, for instance, doesn’t necessarily mean the district is in violation of the ADA, if there are other suitable schools in the district those students can attend.

Some schools have been forced to make changes. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights resolved a complaint against the Chartiers-Houston School District in western Pennsylvania about a playground and outdoor garden inaccessible to students with mobility impairments. The district, which had a playground on top of grass and mulch, with a fence separating the playground from a paved accessible surface, agreed to fix the accessibility issues, according to the office’s decision.

The office said it analyzes “whether there is an accessible route leading to and through the playground, which is firm, stable, and slip resistant; whether there is a sufficient range of play structure activities within the playground that is accessible to and usable by disabled individuals; and whether there is accessible surfacing beneath accessible play equipment that is firm, stable, slip resistant, and resilient.”

To parents like Danielle Waltzer, making playgrounds inclusive shouldn’t be complicated in one of the most affluent districts in the state.

“There’s literally no reason why they can’t,” said Waltzer, who has three children, including a daughter with special needs and impaired mobility, and worked with Lower Merion Township on plans for an inclusive playground at Gladwyne Park. Waltzer said parents are willing to help the district, including by raising money.

At a facilities committee meeting in January, Mussoline suggested the school board could solicit community members for ideas about funding and grants, and ideas “to create some type of structure around finance for this.”

Garner has qualms about fundraising. “If this were a roof or building, they wouldn’t be crowdsourcing,” she said. While she thinks all elementary playgrounds should be made inclusive, the district could start with just one, she said, and expand the renovations over time.

Apollo is growing aware that he moves differently than other children, Garner said; currently, she serves as his one-on-one at his school, carrying him up steps and hoisting him onto equipment. When he’s in kindergarten, however, the aide assigned to him won’t be able to do that.

She’s still deciding where to enroll him this fall. “I’m not going to send my child somewhere he cannot play with his friends,” she said.