When the Chips Are Down, Some Just Don’t Want to Play

Something was different about the neighborhood playground, and 5-year-old Evan was able to put a finger on it.

He could even pick it up with both hands. And hunkered in his fort beneath the slide, Evan summed up his feelings: “Wood chips stink. I don’t like it.”

At Santiago Hills Park recently, the city of Orange replaced the playground’s bed of sand with wood chips. Some parents believe that the switch deprives children of the playing-in-sand experience, but city officials say they’re just following federal law.

Santiago Hills Park is one of 10 parks Orange has refurbished since 2000 to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. The law was passed in 1990 to protect people with disabilities from discrimination and to afford them equal opportunities in the workplace and public areas.

Orange has spent an average of $80,000 per site for new playground sets, equipped with such features as lowered swings with back supports. One of the jungle gyms has a station that teaches the Braille alphabet. Officials also replaced the playground surface with wood chips because wheelchairs and walkers can’t go through sand.

Though parents at Santiago Hills Park respect the city’s compliance with the ADA, some feel that an inherent childhood experience is being sacrificed.

“There’s got to be a way of preserving what children have grown up with,” said Alana Smith. She encountered a similar situation last year, when her twin sons’ elementary school converted the playground from sand to wood chips over summer break.

The boys, she said, considered the school ruined without the sand.

And they have clear opinions about wood chips: “It hurts when you fall, and they get in your shoes,” said 11-year-old Connor Smith.

So when Santiago Hills Park reopened with new equipment and surfacing several weeks ago, Alana Smith felt her sons had lost an incentive to play in the park. “I don’t know if it’ll be as easy of a sell” to get them to go to the park, she said. “I don’t want them to sit and play video games even longer.”

Kathy Czaykowski, owner of a day-care center near Santiago Hills Park, lobbied to keep sand at the park. Ultimately, city officials compromised by building a sandbox at one end of the playground.

“To take sand out of our parks takes a valuable and innate play opportunity away from our children,” said Czaykowski, who has directed Kamp Kathy for 13 years. “Has anybody built a sand castle out of wood chips?”

Gabe Garcia, community service manager in Orange, said the parks improvement project is the city’s pledge to improve accessibility. The city has secured all funding through state and federal grants.

Garcia added that reaction to the other 10 refurbished parks -- the last park is scheduled for renovation next year -- has been overwhelmingly positive.

“A litmus test is if you drive around and see the amount of use [a park is] getting,” he said. “Every park is unique and different; there’s no cookie-cutter site. It has worked out extremely well.”

Advocates for the disabled say a growing number of cities are moving toward ADA compliance but add that they are playing catch-up with a federally mandated deadline that passed a decade ago.

The Americans With Disabilities Act required that accessibility changes at city, county, state and federal facilities “be made as expeditiously as possible, but no later than January 26, 1995.”

Many disability-rights groups concede that the deadline was impractical for time and budgetary reasons. But they are encouraged by the increased efforts.

“Is progress as fast as I would like? No. But it’s heading in a positive direction,” said Bill Stothers, deputy director for the Center for an Accessible Society. “People are often having to go to cities and say, ‘You can’t lose sight of it. You have to keep pushing on this.’ ”

Last year, Irvine completed renovation of Turtle Rock Community Park, the first of 16 sites scheduled for ADA and safety upgrades through 2009. The city’s parks rehabilitation program includes replacing the playground area with a sand and rubber surface and monthly inspections of play equipment. The city estimated that renovation of all its parks would exceed $5.3 million, but the cost is offset by various initiatives. For example, Irvine will receive a $25,000 state grant in exchange for turning 1,445 recycled California tires into rubber surfacing at Presley Park.

“Irvine is very proactive in meeting that need in the community,” said Ken Lazette, the city’s community services superintendent for facility rehabilitation. “We are addressing ADA issues with play equipment and surface accessibility. It’s taking out the old and putting in the new.”

In Anaheim, about 30 of the city’s 46 parks were built before the ADA took effect. Parks and Golf Supt. Jack Kudron said most of the playgrounds were renovated to ADA standards in the 1990s, and all have wood-chip surfacing. Fullerton is replacing playgrounds as funding becomes available, said spokesman Randy McDaniel. The city has three playgrounds it plans on renovating over the next several years.

On a recent afternoon at Santiago Hills Park’s newly created sandbox, two young girls were on their backs making sand angels. Others were towing plastic trucks, some playing with a shovel and bucket.

Megan, a 3-year-old in Kathy Czaykowski’s day-care group, accidentally dropped a rag doll in the wood chips. After spending several minutes plucking splinters off her doll, Megan went about her business up the ramp and down the slide.

“Will the kids adjust? Yeah. But [would] it be even better with sand? Absolutely,” Czaykowski said. “It’s our job as parents and teachers that the kids’ needs are met.”