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School, city build new playgrounds
One at Rebecca Boone Elementary, the other at Warrenton Athletic Complex
Students at Rebecca Boone Elementary School will start this school year with not only new teachers, school supplies and classes, but a new playground.
The Parent Teacher Organization installed the $15,000 playground on July 11.
"The PTO put the manpower together because we were able to save an additional 30 percent by putting it together ourselves," said school Principal Jill Schowe.
It replaces a previous playground the district tore down in 2007 to make room for an addition to the building. The addition provided room for 15 new classrooms, but since then students have made do with just a metal set of swings and foursquare game painted onto the back parking lot asphalt.
The highlights of the new playground are two small rock climbing walls.
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"The students actually voted on how that worked," said Assistant Principal Todd Ponder, explaining that staff polled students about what features they wanted most on the playground.
Other features students voted in were climbing ropes and monkey bars.
"This really adds a lot to what they can do outside," Ponder said. "For a couple of years, they only had just the swings in the back and the kids could play foursquare."
The school's playground is not the only new play area in town. The Warrenton Recreation Department recently installed a playground, which cost about $15,000, at the Warrenton Athletic Complex, off Hickory Lick Road.
Patrick Randolph, the city's recreation director, had thought for a while about installing a playground at the complex because it didn't have anything except open green space to occupy younger children while their families participated in ball games on league nights or in tournaments, he said.
He first thought about relocating the playground at Paddocks Fields to the complex because it was being vandalized. He changed his mind after finding a good bargain on new equipment.
"It would have cost us just as much to purchase new equipment as it would to repaint it," he said.
The new playground includes two slides, monkey bars, a large tunnel and an area for toddlers to play with a car steering wheel.
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