What a week we had with the beautiful Melrose Leadership Academy community completing our fourth schoolyard build of the year. Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation, KABOOM!, and Oakland Unified School District joined with volunteers to completely revitalize the MLA Sherman TK-2nd grade campus. In just three days, our hardworking crew installed a new play structure with some of our most playful elements to date! Plus, we constructed three new nature areas including an outdoor classroom, a special TK area, and 30 trees. There’s also a mini soccer pitch, a new multi-sport court, multiple murals, and a Little Town Library full of books.
Thank you to our incredible partners KABOOM! and OUSD, the continued and generous support of Workday and Kaiser Permanente, the welcoming MLA Sherman community, and our entire village of volunteers and supporters, including Lineage, Rakuten, Ripple, Curry Brand (an Under Armour brand), William G. Irwin Foundation, American Psychiatric Association Foundation, Back to the Roots, Inc., Clif Bar, Commercial Energy, Flexpower Health Inc, Ghirardelli Chocolate Company, Semifreddi's Inc, Golden State Warriors, GOODLES, Materne North America - GoGo squeeZ, The Home Depot, Sweet July, Café Colucci, Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers, Aburaya, Arizmendi Bakery, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Lockheed Martin, LORBER FAMILY FOUNDATION, AGANA, Vogue, Whit the DJ.
This build is part of Eat. Learn. Play.'s overall vision to rebuild 25 schoolyards by the end of the 2025-26 school year. Learn more at eatlearnplay.org.
#playspaceequity #eatlearnplay #schoolyardbuild #oakland #joyfulschools
Photos by Mike Rasay