Parents, clubs, businesses provide money for school facility in poor neighborhood
By Cathy Spaulding
Muskogee (Okla.) Daily Phoenix
June 21, 2008

Sixth-grader Kayla Royse said she didn’t have a decent playground set for all the years she spent at Irving Elementary School.

“I just walk around and be bored during recess,” she said. “I didn’t think I could ever get to see a playground set that was fun.”

When Kayla and other Irving students come back to school this August, they’ll have a new set — yellow and Rougher green, complete with humpy slides, towers and spiral ladders.

Irving school administrators and Parent Teacher Organization members said hard work and good fortune helped them raise the thousands of dollars to buy and put up the playground set.

Irving, however, faced an extra challenge because of its high poverty rate, Irving principal Dr. Pam Bradley said. In 2007, 87 percent of Irving students were on free or reduced lunch. Tony Goetz Elementary, where Bradley used to be principal, had a 60 percent of its students on free or reduced lunch. The district average was 75 percent on free and reduced lunch; the state average, 56 percent. [More]

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