Now, the school has a native plant garden brimming with tall grass, flowers and butterflies, a new swing set and additional playground equipment, a basketball court, a running track circling a soccer field and an outdoor class area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was just asphalt. There was nothing,\u201d Baeza said. \u201cIt was a really old little piece of swing. Not even a swing, like a slide. That was it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new spaces are also redesigned to address heavy rains in neighborhoods historically vulnerable to serious flooding, particularly on the South and West sides of the city<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2014, Chicago-based Healthy Schools Campaign,<\/a> a national nonprofit that works to ensure schools can provide students with healthy environments, nutritious food, health services and opportunities for physical activity \u2014 transformed playgrounds at Grissom and three other schools. Since then, the Space to Grow<\/a> program has turned 36 barren yards at public schools across Chicago into green\u00a0<\/b>community hubs; five more redesign projects are breaking ground this summer.<\/p>\n Claire Marcy, senior vice president of Healthy Schools Campaign, recalls principals from different schools echoing the same concerns: \u201cLook at my outdoor space,\u201d they\u2019d say. \u201cIt\u2019s concrete, it\u2019s broken equipment. When it rains, it\u2019s just giant puddles.\u201d<\/p>\n Human-made climate change is only intensifying<\/a> heavy storms in the Midwest that more easily overwhelm<\/a> Chicago\u2019s outdated sewer system.<\/p>\n Instructional bilingual teacher assistant Esperanza Baeza teaches a student about purslane in the Garden of Harmony \u2014 El Jard\u00edn de Harmon\u00eda \u2014 at Grissom Fine and Performing Arts Elementary School, July 2, 2025. (Hailey Hoffman\/for the Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Instructional bilingual teacher assistant Esperanza Baeza pours water onto the permeable playground surface to demonstrate how it absorbs water at Grissom Fine and Performing Arts Elementary School, July 2, 2025, in Chicago. (Hailey Hoffman\/for the Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n A student waters the garden beds at Grissom Fine and Performing Arts Elementary School in Chicago on July 2, 2025. (Hailey Hoffman\/for the Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Instructional bilingual teacher assistant Esperanza Baeza grabs a sprig of purslane at the Grissom Fine and Performing Arts Elementary School\u2019s garden in Chicago on July 2, 2025. (Hailey Hoffman\/for the Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Pictured before its transformation in 2014, the schoolyard at Virgil Grissom Elementary School at 12810 S. Escanaba Ave. in Hegewisch was a barren plot of asphalt. One of the first four schools to be redesigned by the Space to Grow program of the Healthy Schools Campaign, it now boasts a community garden. (Space to Grow\/Healthy Schools Campaign)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Native plants, some several feet high, surround Grissom Fine and Performing Arts Elementary School\u2019s playground in Chicago on July 2, 2025. (Hailey Hoffman\/for the Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Purple cornflowers, a plant native to Chicago, grow at the Grissom Fine and Performing Arts Elementary School\u2019s garden on July 2, 2025. (Hailey Hoffman\/for the Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Emily Zhang, Space to Grow project manager, at Grissom Fine and Performing Arts Elementary School in Chicago on July 2, 2025. (Hailey Hoffman\/for the Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Show Caption<\/p>\n 1 of 8<\/p>\n Instructional bilingual teacher assistant Esperanza Baeza teaches a student about purslane in the Garden of Harmony \u2014 El Jard\u00edn de Harmon\u00eda \u2014 at Grissom Fine and Performing Arts Elementary School, July 2, 2025. (Hailey Hoffman\/for the Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n Expand<\/a><\/p>\n At Grissom, permeable surfaces and the water retention system can hold nearly 254,000 gallons at once, and drain quickly between storms.<\/p>\n One of the most recently redesigned schoolyards, which opened at Spencer Technology Academy in Austin this May, can capture more than 625,000 gallons of water each year. Experts hope the redesign will help mitigate heavy rains like those that occurred in July 2023, when most 311 calls for basement flooding came from the West Side neighborhood<\/a>, a predominantly Black community<\/a> in an area with high flood risk<\/a>.<\/p>\n Many of the schoolyards have permeable play surfaces that absorb water into the ground. Some also have underground storage systems \u2014 large chambers that slow the release of water into the local sewer system. When the pipes, which carry both stormwater runoff and sewage, are quickly overwhelmed, they can overflow and cause localized flooding issues across the city.<\/p>\n Pavers coil into a spiral design at Grissom\u2019s outdoor classroom stage area, also part of the redesign. But the bricks are not held together by any kind of concrete or plastic edging, which would leave rainwater with nowhere to go.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at the little stones in between the cracks, that\u2019s what allows the water to seep through,\u201d said Emily Zhang, project manager at Space to Grow.<\/p>\n So far, the program has added over 650,000 square feet \u2014 the equivalent of 11 football fields \u2014 of permeable surfaces to Chicago\u2019s land area, according to its staff. The actual total might be even higher, however, if grass and other green elements that can also capture rainfall are considered. It all acts like a sponge, Zhang said.<\/p>\n For instance, natural landscaping and design strategies in the redesigns that soak up precipitation include rain and native pollinator gardens or bioswales, which are shallow landscape depressions that hold water, allowing it to seep into the ground.<\/p>\n \u201cNo schoolyard looks the same,\u201d Zhang said. \u201cPeople define green stormwater infrastructure differently, but for us, (they) look like green spaces, or spaces that mimic natural processes of handling water in the water cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n Plants of all kinds grow in the garden, edible and otherwise: onions, radishes, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, snap peas, milkweed<\/a> and sunflowers.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s, of course, all the native plants that have deep roots,\u201d Zhang said. \u201cIf it were (just a) lawn, then we would see continued flooding issues.\u201d<\/p>\n Scattered along the western edge of the schoolyard are patches of ornamental and native plants and grasses, including purple cornflowers. The first five years, Baeza said, entailed a lot of watering and removing weeds. Every other year, she takes cuttings from some of the herbal plants to create new patches of vegetation.<\/p>\n While Chicago Public Schools has contracts for schoolyard maintenance, students and teachers at the redesigned spaces often participate in daily and regular tasks to care for them, especially the gardens.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of conversation with the students and the school teams about this: How do we make this your schoolyard that you want to help maintain?\u201d Marcy said. \u201cThere\u2019s that everyday stuff about sort of loving and owning the schoolyard \u2026 students have really taken ownership over that.\u201d<\/p>\n Inspiring that ownership starts from the beginning of the design process, which involves all students, teachers, administrators and also the broader community. Since the yards remain open after school and on the weekends, they serve as a public park<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really the only community space on this side of Hegewisch that\u2019s accessible,\u201d said Christine Hurley, Grissom\u2019s principal<\/p>\n Through the collaborative design process, the final elements in each schoolyard respond to needs that might vary across institutions and neighborhoods. Students take surveys, do mapping activities and even create 3D dioramas to bring their visions to life.<\/p>\n \u201cWe really value the power of student voices,\u201d Zhang said, \u201cbecause students and children and young people, in general, are an overlooked population and demographic when it comes to development and making decisions about what happens in their neighborhood. And they\u2019re our future leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n On a recent weekday morning, some students were watering the community garden beds as part of summer school programming. They had just wrapped up a yoga and meditation session.<\/p>\n Once transformed, these play and learning spaces also provide the school and community with a place of relaxation and well-being.<\/p>\n Four years after Grissom opened its new schoolyard, researchers from Loyola University and the University of California at Berkeley found<\/a> the redesigns there\u00a0and at two of the other schools had increased the use of outdoor space, positive student interactions, greater physical activity, higher teacher satisfaction, and strengthened the relationships between the schools and their communities.<\/p>\n Baeza\u2019s phone rang. It was a student\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s the one (who) helps me with the garden,\u201d the teacher said. \u201cWe have parents that are very dedicated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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Google Earth satellite images from April 3, 2013, and May 1, 2015, show a transformation of the schoolyard at Virgil Grissom Elementary School in the Hegewisch neighborhood led by the Space to Grow program of Chicago-based nonprofit Healthy Schools Campaign.<\/p>\n