On Wednesday, Hayward school and city officials, community members, Lowe’s and Carter’s Kids representatives and volunteers gathered for a ribbon cutting ceremony to unveil a new playground structure at Park Elementary. The previous play area was largely made up of rusted metal structures with chipped paint and a broken slide.

Last year, Park students voiced to the school staff that they needed to replace their playground. Aaron Tigereno, the principal of Park Elementary, and his staff were figuring out a way to raise money to replace the playground.

Tigereno said that students were having accidents such as getting cut while playing on the structure. Hayward Unified School District Superintendent Stanley Dobbs said that the structure was not dangerous because most damages were at the bottom of the structure. Putty was used for repair but the students deserved a better edifice to play on, said Dobbs.

Carter’s Kids, founded by TV personality Carter Oosterhouse is a non-profit organization that builds playgrounds for underserved communities. The organization built the new structure at Park Elementary with a $62,000 donation from Lowes. Over fifty employees from Lowes helped build the new structures.

Katherine Day, a third grade teacher, stumbled upon an article about Carter’s Kids while she was reading from her Sierra Club magazine last year. She emailed Carter’s Kids and said “[Quay Chilcott, the executive director] sent back an email to me right away saying ‘how great that your email arrived at my desk this morning because we are in the process of looking for a Bay Area school to build a playground.’”

Park Elementary is America’s oldest year-round school, it opened in 1960 and became year-round in 1968. Tigereno said, “Our structure hasn’t received any service in god knows how many years.”

Carter’s Kids worked closely with the principal and staff to design a custom playground that was geared for students within kindergarten through third grade and compliant with California’s safety standards.

Hayward Councilmember Mark Salinas believes the city has a lack of proper parks and playgrounds.  He said, “A lot of the elementary schools have a lot of space but the problem is a lot of the equipment is old. So I think what we need to do as a city is support the schools and parks to update park and playground equipment.”

On Jan. 25, over 150 faculty, students, staff and parents from Park Elementary and California State University, East Bay volunteered to prepare the school grounds in anticipation for the new playground.

Lauren Pitcher, communication manager for Hayward Promise Neighborhood, said, “We did painting, gardening, cleaning, various repair projects and digging up the old playground structure to basically make room for the new playground structure.”

The total project to set up this new structure took three days. Carter’s Kids shipped the playground parts to Park Elementary with instructional manuals.

Tigereno said that Lowe’s workers volunteered to assemble the parts together on Monday at noon and they finished at Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. They cemented the structure and left it to dry until the ribbon cutting on Wednesday.

Oosterhouse, who is also a carpenter who hosts HGTV’s “Carter Can.” In 2007, he founded Carter’s Kids because he was concerned about childhood obesity and wanted improve children’s cognitive function and academic performance through play.

He said he built it, “So with a play structure like this they’ll have another space to get out of the classroom and release that energy and go back in the classroom and study harder.”

Amy Smart, Oosterhouse’s wife and film actress, said, “I go [to] most of the builds when I’m not working and it’s so gratifying to meet everyone of that community and all the kids and the people that are going to be enjoying these playgrounds because to me it’s a gift that gives for many years and it makes kids happier and healthier and better in school.”

After Oosterhouse performed the ribbon cutting with Tigereno the Park Elementary students played on the new structure for the first time.

Oosterhouse said, “When the children get to run on and play on it, that’s the best part of the whole build. The project, the culmination, is when the children get to play.”

“This is what it looks like when a community puts the children first and goes and finds the right partners to help them achieve their dream,” said Dobbs, “Thank you Carter’s Kids. Thank you Lowes because in two or three days the vision that these children started a year ago is a reality.”