A new playground revives this Fort Worth neighborhood’s gathering space

Maria Baez used to love swinging on the monkey bars when she was a kid.

That was her favorite part of the playground at recess, when she would run around with friends at Worth Heights Elementary School.

Decades later, Baez is back on the playground — watching kids climb on a brand new set of equipment that she helped install at the end of last year with American Airlines, which donated the playground to the school in partnership with Carter’s Kids.

“It’s good to come back and give back because I know, being raised in this neighborhood and in this community, how important it is,” she said. “A lot of times for certain reasons they don’t have accessibility to a lot of things.”

But the project has added importance to Baez, whose mother and daughter also attended the school — which is integral to the neighborhood and the community.

Her daughter, Zoe Baez, who is now 22, went as far as to call the school grounds a second home when she was growing up.

“I remember having really close friendships because I used to be in … classes where you speak both Spanish and English, so I was really close with a lot of my classmates because we were very similar,” she said. “It is kind of like we were all cousins or something.”

Worth Heights was first community for Fort Worth family

The tight-knit community and cultural shared experiences made her feel safe, and welcomed growing up, Zoe Baez said.

“Everyone is so similar, even down to the teachers,” she said. “We all come from the same place — like my mom’s friend used to live next door, and her aunt was my teacher. And then her aunt was my mom’s best friend’s teacher — it is all very close, it is just community.”

Unlike her mother, Zoe Baez preferred the sandbox, where she would act like a “little teacher,” and boss her fellow classmates around along with her friends.

“I think it was the little woman in us before we were women,” she said.

Worth Heights was the first community to embrace Zoe’s grandmother, Maria Luna, when she first came to America, with the generations after learning some of the lessons and morals first taught in Worth Heights all those years ago, she said.

“That school has instilled a lot of morals and values in us and taught us for the rest of our lives,” she said. “Because it was one of the first little societies that we were part of.”

Zoe Baez said that her story is reflected across the neighborhood.

For many kids, the playground was one of the only times they could have the space and ability to play, making the investment in a new playground extra meaningful.

But over the years playgrounds across the district, including the one at Worth Heights have fallen into disrepair. Boarded-up slides, fenced-off equipment and caution tape have led to disappointment for kids both at recess and after school.

Zoe Baez said that increased donations, as well as efforts by the district to increase equity in play spaces across their campuses gives her some hope.

“I like to see the kids here on the south side of Fort Worth have nicer things and see what it’s like to get new stuff,” she said. “A lot of kids out here are just used to secondhand stuff, old stuff, worn-down things, you know, so I’m happy those kids are able to get something new and they feel like they’re important. And like, there’s somebody or some organization that’s thinking about them.”

District hopes to achieve playspace equity with new initiative

Mirgitt Crespo, a senior officer of grants and development for the Fort Worth school district who is working with a national nonprofit, Kaboom, to provide new playgrounds to campuses in need across the district, said providing underserved communities a chance to participate, and ownership over their neighborhood instills pride that has the ability to lift up the whole area.

“In order for you to do equity, you had to distribute and really give the people the dignity of having the same things as beautiful as other areas of town,” she said. “And they will rise up for that because we have seen how the community cares. They call if something is being destroyed, because they care.”

Through the initiative, the district hopes to engage with multiple campuses each year, depending on the donations and outside funding by partners that reach out to the grants department.

“I think that is part of the appeal of the equity piece, is that people forget that beautification and having good infrastructure and good streets and sidewalks, and clean streets makes you feel like part of the community,” Crespo said. “And when you are proud of something, you don’t destroy it, you take care of it.”

Zoe Baez said that for many students, a trip to the playground is an escape they don’t otherwise get.

“I definitely think that all kids should have access to a nice, high-quality playground because that’s … the closest thing to a vacation that kid over here is going to get,” she said. “Some kids over here don’t get to go out of town and see different things and go to Disney World. For some kids, that’s their Disney World.”

“So I definitely think that everybody, all kids are entitled and deserve a nice playground that they can create those fun memories where they want to go back and they have that vivid memory in their mind as they get older,” she added.

Zoe has her own son now, who is now 6 months old, and said he too could benefit from the new equipment one day, adding that she is proud of her mom for helping make that possible.

“I’m proud of her for always keeping us in mind … and I’m happy to see that people do care and do think about us,” Zoe said of her mom, and the donation. “My little cousins go there so even if I didn’t get to get the new playground, they got to get it, you know, and I have a son now. And he’s only 6 months old. But if he ends up going to that school, then my son will be there.”

Playground important for both community and school

Andrea Lange, the principal of the school, said that the school playground is a gathering place for the community, making the investment more impactful than just on kids at recess.

“We have a really strong community and they love to use our track and our playgrounds after school, in the evenings and on the weekends,” she said. “So to have another area for them to use is really important.”

Campus leaders can’t afford the price of playground equipment on their own, and dozens of playgrounds across the district are in need of repairs or new facilities — making donations like that of American Airlines key to updating playspaces, Lange said.

“When you have organizations that are willing to donate, this really takes the burden off the school district,” she said.

The new facilities also work in-line with the campus and district’s goals of having multiple recesses a day.

“We have two 15-minute recesses a day, so now we are going to be able to get more kids out throughout the day and to be active,” she said. “Because the more they run around and get that energy out, the better they’re able to focus when they go inside.”

Melissa Ruback, a second-grade dual-language teacher, echoed that as she watched her students get a first look at the new playground the day after it was installed.

“We do want them to be very active,” she said. “Kids love having their free time, so having the playground gives them another opportunity to be active.”

And for the first time in a while, the kids are playing on a fully open playground.

“They are super excited because if you look at their other playground, it is always busted, something is always broken off of it or we have to close it down for one reason or another, so they have been wanting a new playground,” she said.

District maintenance officials cited backlogs related to supply-chain issues as well as rising prices of supplies as contributing to the backlog in repairs.

For Maria Baez, she is hoping that students see her service as an example of where you can go when you start at Worth Heights, and that at the end of the day — you can always come back.

“It’s good to be able to come back to be an example of, you can still come from here, go out in the world and still come back and bring it back into your community to help,” she said. “It’s definitely a good feeling.”