EXETER — As far as Daneen Kerns is concerned, the Sarah J. Dymond playground equipment should stay in the district.
A kindergarten teacher for Wyoming Area, Kerns voiced her concerns Tuesday night at the Wyoming Area School District work session.
At a previous meeting, the board voted to give the Dymond equipment to Wyoming Area Catholic instead of having it re-purposed somewhere else in the district. In April 2016, the board decided to close the Harding school and restructure the district for the 2016-2017 school district.
Kerns said the playground at the kindergarten has a dirt ground which doesn’t get mulched and there is no grass growing.
“We could absolutely use it,” she said.
Board Solicitor Jarrett Ferentino said a company, with manpower and heavy equipment, will move the pieces for Wyoming Area Catholic.
“The problem was removing it from Dymond,” Board member Gerald Stofko said. “(Wyoming Area) Catholic will take it out.”
Kerns asked if the parents could remove the equipment.
“The parents couldn’t do it,” Stofko rebuked. “This is huge.”
Stofko and Frank Pugliese, the district’s facilities director, said the equipment was “installed very well” and the district doen’t have manpower or hardware to remove the playground’s pieces.
Pugliese explained the pieces were put in sonic tubes — cardboard tubes about 18 to 24 inches in diameter, four to five feet — in the ground.
“We’d have to excavate a very large area,” Pugliese said, noting there would be potential for the district to break some of the buried parts.
Stofko said district administrators would consider the Dymond playground detrimental if the playground equipment kept there while the building was being sold.
“It was not worth it. As a board member, I think you should take the figures in my mind,” Stofko said. “We didn’t make a hasty decision.”
