PANAMA CITY — The fine, white, soft sands that have piled up in the shoes of local schoolchildren for ages will be replaced with a more amiable playground turf.
School playgrounds will have to exchange beach sand for a different kind of surface to comply with American with Disabilities Act (ADA) playground standards.
While sand meets ADA standards for a falling child, it doesn’t allow for every child to access playground equipment; it’s virtually impossible to move a wheelchair or navigate with crutches. The district is moving toward getting rid of the sand for either mulch or artificial turf.
“Wood chips make it accessible,” said Paul Holland, project manager in the facilities department at Bay District Schools. However, the chips mesh together tightly and aren’t very responsive to pressure.
A pad with artificial turf atop is ideal, he said.
About 19 percent of Bay’s students have disabilities; the majority of the students are at Margaret K. Lewis School, which already has an ADA-compliant wood chip mulch surface.
The turf has a special pressure response padding and, unlike sand and wood chips, won’t need constant replenishing.
Nearly all playgrounds have beach sand, a round sand that doesn’t compact, but eventually all playgrounds will be accessible with the turf.
Holland said the department is looking to a higher millage levy to help the transition. The current local capital improvements tax (LCI), which funds such projects, is at 1 mill and generates $15,006,566 annually. If the levy were raised to 1.5 mills, wit would yield $22.5 million. One mill equates to $1 of tax for every $1,000 of value.
It costs about $5 to $6 per square foot to install sand at 12 inches deep, $9 to $10 per square foot for mulch and $14 to install artificial turf per square foot.
“It sounds like an astronomical price” to install the turf, but you don’t have to touch it for years, Holland said.