With the support of a $1.2 million grant from the California Natural Resources Agency’s Urban Greening program, the Cesar Chavez Living Schoolyard project transformed an unshaded asphalt-covered schoolyard into a vibrant, tree-covered, park-like setting in a critically an underserved neighborhood in East Oakland. The site hosts two elementary schools, and their more than 600 students now enjoy a real grass play field, an expanded learning garden featuring an outdoor classroom and fruit orchard, a dry creek, a nature-play zone, as well as pollinator-attracting landscape areas, expanded seating and gathering options, and 65 new trees. Designed through a robust participatory design process led by Trust for Public Land and completed in 2020, the schoolyard is a direct reflection of the collective vision of the students, families, teachers, and school staff.
Since the completion of the Cesar Chavez Living Schoolyard, Trust for Public Land has similarly transformed three other public elementary schools in East Oakland. The benefits of schoolyard greening projects are many: improving air quality; mitigating impacts to stressed stormwater systems; providing climate resiliency by increasing shade in urban heat islands; creating habitat for native animals; and perhaps most critically- increasing the health and wellbeing of children.
At the Cesar Chavez Living Schoolyard the community sees and feels these benefits firsthand. Ana Vasquez, principal at Cesar Chavez’s Think College Now elementary school says, “We strive to bring our students joy, and the schoolyard and its bountiful beauty serves as a daily joyful experience of la vida verde, offering playful journeys for our students in the heart of the Fruitvale District in Oakland.“
The students not only enjoy the space, but also help to care for it, with mentorship from school staff and the community organization Growing Together. Garden Steward Jose Luis Rodriguez, who facilitates students’ connection to the schoolyard and witnesses the benefits of that relationship said of the project, “The Living Schoolyard transformation at Cesar Chavez has not only transformed our community but our students as well. Being surrounded by the beauty of nature is teaching our students how to be stewards of the land at a very young age. Students have a chance to become explorers and let their imagination free in the midst of butterflies, hummingbirds and many other beautiful living creatures. This also teaches our students the importance of nature and the interconnectedness of all living things.”
