"A new study, published in the July issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, suggests that you don’t have to rebuild a community to give people more room to get active: Minor policy changes can encourage use of a largely untapped resource — public schools.
Most public schools provide space for people to get active, like playgrounds, athletic fields, outdoor tracks, outdoor basketball courts, swimming pools and indoor gymnasiums. Although many of these are funded primarily through tax dollars, liability concerns prevent schools from encouraging their use after school hours. The logic behind this is understandable: Schools don’t want to deal with lawsuits from disgruntled joggers who twist their ankles on the track at night. Still, as a result of this approach, other parks and facilities must be built and maintained for general use, which can ultimately waste valuable resources."We could even use schools as learning centers providing learning services for families as well as playgrounds and gardens. We could actually view schools as community resources instead of a factory run by a bureaucracy that is empowered on a police model to enforce attendance and pour a standardized curriculum into the heads of children, testing to ensure each product is the same.
reforesting the commons
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