WESTVILLE, N.J. (CBS) — It’s back-to-school time, but for one Gloucester County school, that also means going back to the drawing board. Archbishop Damiano School has been working for years to make a dream a reality. This year, the school is ready to pick up the pace of fundraising.
You often see students dreaming of their perfect playground at Archbishop Damiano School. Their wish list, posted in the hallway, includes everything from slides and swings to sensory tables with sand, music and water.
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“These kinds of sensory experiences are so important for these kids,” said Brittany Carney.
Carney is a mother of three school-aged children. Sitting with her 7-year-old son Logan, it’s clear she wants the best for him and his siblings. The current school playground is far from that.
“He doesn’t know how to sit on a typical swing,” she said. “He needs a modified swing, and I feel like he’s missing something.”
Logan is just one of more than 100 students who attend Archbishop Damiano’s school in Westville. Archbishop Damiano serves students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, ages 3 to 21. However, its playground is 15 years old and sits on a raised, cracked hard surface. Most notably, it has no equipment adapted for students with special needs.
“It’s really hard to make ends meet now,” said Kelly Plucinski.
Plucinski’s daughter attends this school and would like to see the playground renovated.
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“If it’s hard for her to get up on the playground, she can’t really play with the other kids on the playground,” Plucinski said.
The school’s principal, Michele McCloskey, has been trying to raise money for a new playground for years.
“Students in wheelchairs are not getting equal experiences right now,” McCloskey said. “They can’t get to the playground equipment. If they go up a hill, they have nowhere to turn around and come back down. We’re basically traveling to other playgrounds now so our students can have those experiences, and that makes me sad.”
Archbishop Damiano is a private, nonprofit school. McCloskey says tuition is used for adaptive equipment and communication devices needed in the classroom. She says there are also spending limits on therapeutic items, including playground equipment, and grants are hard to come by.
“There’s not a lot of funding available to us for playgrounds,” McCloskey said.
But that hasn’t stopped the planning. The school wants to move the playground to the back of the building to a quiet, flat space with more shade. She says adding adaptive equipment — designed for the students — will give them a sense of independence and freedom.
“There’s not a lot of things that I get to do in the world that feel like they were made for us,” Carney said. “So when we have these spaces that are meant for kids like mine, it’s life-changing as a parent. That means the world to me.”
McCloskey says private donations are essential, but progress has been slow. The school has raised just $100,000 of the $600,000 it needs. But school leaders just found a donor who has pledged to match every dollar donated.
