When the children of Toronto came to school this September, a little surprise was waiting for them. In their playgrounds, instead of monkey bars, slides, and jungle gyms, they found... nothing.
Yes, the Toronto School Board decided to rip out 172 sets of playground equipment and take them away. Are they buying new equipment? No. They don't have enough money to do that. It will cost about $27 million to replace them. That's right: $27 MILLION.
What happened? Did a lot of parents complain about children getting injured on the equipment? No. Did someone die? No. Did the insurance premiums suddenly go up? No.
What happened was this. An inspector from Ottawa had created a report that laid out some guidelines for new playground equipment, with the laudable goal of ensuring that they would be as safe as possible. The new guidelines were better than the old guidelines, of course. Some clever people have found ways to build playground equipment that is safer than ever before.
The Toronto School Board, having received their new guidelines, hired an inspector from a private service to check all of their playground equipment to see if they conformed with the new guidelines. They did not, of course. The old playground equipment is, well, old.
As it turns out, the old playground equipment was not very bad at all. Out of the hundreds of thousands of children who had played on them, no one had ever been killed, nor, apparently, were there many serious injuries. In fact, more children are injured on the paved areas of the playground and the yard than on the playground equipment.
Still, no cost is too high when it comes to children's safety. Except for the cost of common sense and rationality. The Toronto School Board ordered 172 sets of old playground equipment removed, on the off chance that someone, some day, might get hurt really bad. Not including the children who now play on the paved areas of the playground.
The head of the school board defends this decision. "No cost is too high." Well, then, why not hire individual bodyguards to follow every child around all day to make sure the child never gets hurt? But that would be ridiculous. Why would it be ridiculous? Because it would cost too much. It would be too expensive. It would be unreasonable. The cost would be too high. There you go.
Now the School Board is going to go to the parents-- whose opinions about removing the equipment they did not seek-- and ask for donations to pay for new equipment.
The irony is that the man who was in charge of the Toronto School Board's equipment originally has stated that the old equipment was fine. But of course, they didn't hire him to do the inspections-- they hired a consultant. From an outside firm. Just so someone on the school board could cover her ass.
He even said that when it was first installed, the number of reportable "incidents" went down, because, with the jungle jims to occupy them, fewer children got into trouble rough-housing or fighting in the school yard.
Sounds like the guy has some sense.
