EXETER — Daneen Kerns believes the playground equipment from the Sarah J. Dymond School should stay in the Wyoming Area School District.
Kerns, a kindergarten teacher in the district, 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. 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,” Kerns said.
Board Solicitor Jarrett Ferentino said a company, with manpower and heavy equipment, will be moving 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, described that the equipment was “installed very well” and the district didn’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 long — 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 the equipment would be detrimental to a sale of the building if it was kept at the site.
“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.”
