After nearly two years of fundraising and planning, Willis Peters Exceptional Center finally has a new sunshade for its playground.
WPEC provides educational programs and support for students with a wide range of disabilities between the ages of 3 and 22 years old. Many of the students cannot have extended sun exposure due to medical reasons and the shade allows them to have access to the playground and surrounding areas year-round.
“It’s up to a 10 to 15-degree difference under the shade cover, it’s amazing,” Rebecca Nance, ESE Specialist at Willis
Peters Exceptional Center, said. “We have a lot of medically fragile kids that have cardiac issues or seizure response to overheating or, quite frankly, with the population that we serve often times the intellectual development isn’t there to initiate a response like you or I would have if we stepped on a hot surface or if we went down a hot slide to say, ‘Oh that hurts, I don’t want to do that again.’”
Having the shade removes the hazard of having those hot surfaces when working with a population that doesn’t recognize the heat as a danger.
WPEC has been partnering with the community for approximately 30 years, when one student began parking cars on his lawn during the Florida Strawberry Festival. His neighbor watched him learn life skills through the interaction and volunteered his lawn as well.
Verna McKelvin, past president of the Lions Club and current general manager for Wells Memorial, was an employee at the center at the time. When she stepped into a management role at Wells Memorial she opened up its parking lot to WPEC for the festival.
It was through McKelvin’s relationship with WPEC that the Lions Club became connected with the school. She knew the Lions Club had a playground fund started and the group was searching for the best use of the funds.
WPEC invited the Lions Club out to the school to see the playground and meet the students. Frank Cummings, current president of the Lions Club of Plant City, asked WPEC what they could do to help. Nance said the group was quickly sold on the plan to construct a shade and for the past two years they have been working together nonstop to raise the funds for the structure.
“For our kids we can structure teaching opportunity after teaching opportunity, but the most accepted method for teaching any kid, but especially our students that are more significantly intellectually disabled, is really through play and through fun and through incidental learning,” Nance said.
A lot of those learning opportunities arise on the playground, Nance said. When the kids are doing a dance activity or are at the basketball court or are independently exploring the playground, they undergo a “significant increase in growth and independence and understanding of people skills.”
Between a $50,000 grant from Lions International
Foundation, $52,000 from the Plant City Lions Club, $15,000 from Unity in the Community and $10,000 from local businesses, WPEC raised approximately $127,000 to complete this project, according to McKelvin.
The funds went directly toward installing the shade over the playground and the courtyard and Nance said if approved the leftover funds will be used to install a fan. WPEC held a ribbon cutting on May 17 to show off the finished product. There was a cupcake social, a catered luncheon from Johnson’s BBQ and a tour of the covered playground.
“We cut the ribbon and because of the construction the kids hadn’t had a chance to climb on the playground yet so they all ran out to play,” Nance said. “Of course as soon as they got out there it started to storm again and we had to get them all back inside. But I don’t think the weather could have dampened our spirits. It was a great day.”
A previous version of this article had an incorrect sum of contributions to the project. It was corrected to “a $50,000 grant from Lions International Foundation, $52,000 from the Plant City Lions Club, $15,000 from Unity in the Community and $10,000 from local businesses.”