No running on the playground? Yup. After all, somebody could get hurt!
Broward’s “Rules of the Playground” signs, bought from an equipment catalogue and displayed at all 137 elementary schools in the district, are just one of several steps taken to cut down on injuries and the lawsuits they inspire.
“It’s too tight around the equipment to be running,” said Safety Director Jerry Graziose, the Broward County official who ordered the signs. “Our job was to try to control it.”
How about swings or those hand-pulled merry-go-rounds? “Nope. They’ve got moving parts. Moving parts on equipment is the number one cause of injury on the playgrounds.”
Teeter-totters? “Nope. That’s moving too.”
Sandboxes? “Well, I have to be careful about animals” turning them into litter boxes.
Cement crawl tubes? “Vagrants. The longer they are, the higher possibility that a vagrant could stay in them. We have shorter ones now that are made out of plastic or fiberglass.”
To be fair, it’s not just a kill-joy attitude. It’s all about money.
“We could do a lot more if we didn’t have to watch our back every single second,” said Graziose, who has led a playground safety committee for 17 years. “We sometimes get a letter from the attorney before we even get an accident report from the school.”
Since 1999, Broward County schools paid out about $561,000 to settle 189 claims for playground accidents, about 5 percent of the amount the district spent on all injury claims in that time. To keep those numbers low, Graziose said, he needs to keep thinking of ways to make playgrounds safe.
Katherine’s school’s playground has swings, to be sure, but most of it is big multi-function jungle gym things. She has fun — but, then, she’s allowed to run around, despite the obvious danger that she might trip, or run into something, or plow into a wall, or run into the street, or something like that.
Still, it makes me wonder how we survived, or, conversely, how we managed to grow up without my folks filing a huge law suit against, say, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for enough money to put us through college and live in luxury the rest of our lives (after my brother fell off a slide at St Joseph’s Church in Pomona and cut his chin open).
(via J-Walk)
I’d like to know how many such lawsuits have actually been filed (and won). Is there justifiable reason for this, or is it just paranoia brought on by political campaign propaganda about tort reform?
Well, according to the story quoted above (and quoted above): “Since 1999, Broward County schools paid out about $561,000 to settle 189 claims for playground accidents, about 5 percent of the amount the district spent on all injury claims in that time.” That’s not counting their own legal costs.