Fernan's gift to the community

By DEVIN WEEKS

Staff Writer

COEUR d’ALENE — Smiling faces and green grassy spaces are abundant at Fernan STEM Academy.

The tall pines sway in the breeze above the school grounds, providing cool shade on sunny days and perfect places to quietly wait to be found during games of hide-and-seek.

The children of Fernan are not selfish with their playground paradise. Quite the contrary — they want people of all ages and abilities to enjoy its splendor.

"It’s such a beautiful playground, but it’s not accessible to all the kids,” said Fernan life skills teacher Susie Brott.

This is why they’re building the Playground for All, a project of passion and compassion that is just about complete.

"I can’t even talk about it without getting emotional," Brott said. "This is such a gift to the kids and to the community."

Several volunteers worked Saturday morning to put some finishing touches on the Playground for All, tasks that included laying and watering sod, planting trees and packing dirt where it was needed.

This inclusive playground will come with a puppet theater, drum station with marimbas, weather station, outdoor learning classrooms, a wheelchair path and a wheelchair swing.

"It will be the only one in Coeur d’Alene with anything like it because it will be self-propelled,” Brott said. "The kids in the wheelchairs will be able to pull themselves. Once they’re on it there’s a chain that comes down that pulls back a little gate, but they can use that to swing. It’s really going to be neat."

The concept for the Playground for All began when Brott shared with Pam Kiefer's advanced learning fifth-graders her dream of making a playground that every child can enjoy. This was in January 2016.

"I am not kidding, it was amazing," Brott said. "Those kids immediately were up, getting laptops and Chromebooks and iPads and they were researching. I wasn’t even finished talking."

Those fifth-graders, now in seventh grade, went to a school board meeting to pitch this idea to adults who could help it become a reality.

"All these kids came into the meeting and they were like, ‘We’ve raised $1,000,'" said Northwest Specialty Hospital CEO Rick Rasmussen, who just happened to be at that meeting on other business. "I gave them my card and said, ‘Let me help out.’”

"They were brave little fifth-graders," he added. "They said, ‘We want a place for our friends. They have to sit in the gym.'"

Several of those original fifth-graders helped out and supervised during the work day, which took place only a few weeks before the playground is scheduled to open.

"It’s nice that we know that everyone can actually enjoy this field because it’s seven acres or so of this beautiful green field and trees,” said Coeur d'Alene Charter Academy seventh-grader Daisy Birmingham. “Now everyone gets to experience that."

“I’m glad that people in wheelchairs will be able use the trails because the grass is pretty hard to navigate on,” said Canfield seventh-grader Nate Bullock. “And with the wheelchair swing, they’ll be able to experience going up in the air."

Nate's little sister, C.C., is presently a fifth-grader at Fernan and is just as excited about the playground opening as her predecessors.

"I think it’s awesome because everybody can be able to sit in and have a chance to do what everybody else does and they’ll be able to go around the field and go on the wheelchair swings,” she said. "It makes me really happy because they can be included in what everybody else does."

The playground has been wholly a volunteer and community effort. Rasmussen said about $155,000 has been brought in between donations and cash for the project.

"I would say we’re well over $200,000 worth of value that we’re handing to the school district, and look at the quality,” he said, gesturing to the sturdy beams supporting one of the new structures. “These kids’ kids will be able to come back here and say hey, ‘This is something I was a part of.’”

Landscape architect Jon Mueller, who designed the Fernan playground when it first opened, offered his expertise and talent to the project and educated the kids along the way.

"This started out as a STEM introduction to landscape architecture and launched itself into a thing of compassion,” he said. "To me that was the main thing, the compassion and the community."

The playground will also feature "buddy benches" to ensure all kids feel included. It will also include some special dedications to community members who are no longer with us.

Paden Parisot, one of the original fifth-graders, dedicated his buddy bench to Todd "Huddy" Hudson, a great friend of his family who passed away last year.

"He was everyone’s best friend, which is why I decided to dedicate that to him," Paden said.

The Fernan Play-ground for All grand opening will be at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 23.

“It was all the kids’ idea,” Rasmussen said. "To see how passionate and how they wanted a place for their friends to play, was like, ‘Holy cow, let’s find a way to do this.’

“You think of all the stuff going on today and then to see them thinking about other kids, I mean, let’s celebrate that.”

Fernan STEM Academy is located at 520 N. 21st St.