Help our small, tight-knit K-5 school refurbish its existing amphitheatre, patio, and school garden space so it can be utilized to its full potential by both the school and the community.
Leader
Cora Carey
Location
Beech Street Boston, MA 02131
The Mozart School's outdoor common area is more than a playground. It's a community space.
The school's common area includes two great spaces that are in urgent need of repair and attention:
This spring, we want to refurbish the outdoor amphitheatre as Phase One of our refurbishment effort. And we need your help!
This will benefit the entire community - not just Mozart students and staff.
Because of the complex lottery system in our urban district, only some of the young families that live in the Mozart neighborhood attend the school. But - and here's the kicker - nearly all the local families utilize the playground and adjacent play yard. Our outside space is utilized year-round by families, play groups, block parties, and more.
With the funds we raise this spring, we plan to make this built-in amphitheatre more usable and create a community"commons" area that will prove itself as a third space for activities and events including:
What we need now.
This project is a multi-phase effort, and the first chapter will involve the shoring up of the amphitheatre steps installation of astroturf and new soil base.
Once we have the majority of the cash in hand, we can give the green light to the astroturf company, who requires only a couple weeks' notice to get started.
In an ideal world, we could even have the astroturf in place for the end-of-the-year BBQ in mid-June. This event typically includes the entire Mozart community and future Mozart school families. It would be a perfect event and venue to launch the second chapter of fundraising for the Mozart Commons.
For a typical grade school that might have access to an indoor theater or a gym with bleachers, an outdoor theatre area would be merely a nice-to-have feature; but for our pocket-sized school, with its incredibly meager indoor space, this outdoor performance space is a must-have. After considerable analysis and discussion by district and school admins, the consensus is that the only way for this school to grow its community and multi-purpose space is to leverage the outdoor infrastructure.
We have been presented with a unique opportunity to solve this problem: a member of our Mozart community is the owner of a small, local astroturf business, and is willing to provide materials and installation services at cost. While $10k is a daunting amount of money for our little school to raise, it is actually only about 70% of what this would cost at full retail. So the time is now to reclaim this vital commons area for our kids and neighbors!
If we can get the astroturf and soil scaffolding project in by summer vacation, then we can embark on the second wave of fundraising with a goal of raising the money to install shade sails over the space. Not only would this make the space usable in a wider variety of weather, but it would better define the space and lend to the "commons" aesthetic.