Santa Fe Indian School opens playground students helped design

SANTA FE — Students at Santa Fe Indian School had lots of places to climb on their new playground Thursday, a playground that student input helped create.

The pueblo-run school had a $20 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to build the new playground and address significant flooding issues that affect the school’s dorms. But it was terminated over the summer by the Trump administration.

Undeterred, the school and nonprofit Trust for Public Land broke the project up into phases and secured an estimated $350,000 for phase one: building a playground on an open area that used to flood during storms. Work was done to reroute where rainwater flows and ensure the new playground won’t be subject to flooding.

The ongoing project at Santa Fe Indian School is one of nine schoolyard projects at tribal schools that the Trust for Public Land is working on with the Bureau of Indian Education. There are two more in New Mexico at Wingate High School and Wingate Elementary School, schools that serve Navajo Nation communities.

Working on the design of the playground was an amazing experience, said student Kiandra Naranjo-Montoya during a ribbon cutting ceremony.

“The upgrades to our playground will benefit many students for years to come,” Naranjo-Montoya said.

Her class visited other playgrounds in Santa Fe that included different environmental necessities that could also fit in the Santa Fe Indian School playground. They also learned about the playground’s proposed budget and worked with Jennifer Santry, director of the Trust for Public Land’s tribal community schoolyards program, to create an initial design for the playground, which was sent to an architect.

“The goal of this project was to encourage education and make the playground a place to learn,” Naranjo-Montoya said. “It was also our goal to encourage mental and physical wellness, socialization, and to connect with the land.”

Young piñon pines and cottonwoods were planted near new picnic tables, climbing bars and swings. Taos Pueblo donated timber for the project, and funding for the tribal schoolyard program came from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, U.S. Forest Service, Macy’s and The VF Foundation.

The land where the playground is situated was originally flat, but soil was added to address the flooding issue and “to create the various levels of the playscape so that it’s more of a landscape and not just a playground or a piece of playground equipment,” said Heidi Cohen, associate director of the community schoolyards initiative at the Trust for Public Land.

The new space should help students feel at home, according to Superintendent Christie Abeyta.

“When we talk about outdoor learning, when we talk about building spaces for students to be expressive, to connect with the environment, it is with that intentionality and mindset that it should be a reflection of their home,” she said.

In the last five years, the school has had three 100-year floods, causing upward of $5 million in damages, Abeyta said. Despite the EPA grant being terminated, school staff are still hopeful they can secure funds to address the flooding and protect the school buildings and student welfare.

Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said in a statement that students deserve outdoor spaces like the one created by this project that embrace their heritage and well-being, and he will “continue advocating at the national and state level to make this a reality for all of our students.”

The next phase of the Santa Fe Indian School schoolyard project will include Indigenous art, outdoor classroom space and more shade trees and rain gardens, Santry said.

“We’re not having this ribbon cutting to say, ‘OK, we’re done.’ This is a long-term partnership,” she said.