Minnesota Community Schoolyards® Projects

What We’re Doing
Transforming schoolyards into community hubs and quality green spaces where everyone is welcome even after school hours.  

Our Goal
Provide close-to-home community spaces where residents can play, connect, and experience the benefits of the outdoors.  

Reimagining schoolyards. Redefining communities.
A group of children playing on a slide.
Watch Play
A group of young girls playing hopscotch on a sidewalk.
Chiloquin Schoolyard
What is a Community Schoolyard® project?

Community Schoolyards® projects transform asphalt schoolyards into vibrant, green spaces that improve the daily lives of students, educators, and the surrounding community. These spaces are designed with community at their cores, helping address health needs, park equity, and the effects of climate change like heat and flooding. These green spaces are:

Park-like Places
Packed with trees, fun play structures, gathering spaces, athletic facilities, public art, and climate-smart features, these schoolyards act as community hubs everyone can enjoy.

Designed by the Community
These schoolyards are designed by working hand-in-hand with residents, students, teachers, and administrators through a dynamic participatory design process.

Designed with Intention
Community schoolyards promote healthy lifestyle, reduce educational disparities, and improve educational outcomes, while making vulnerable communities more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

Welcoming to Everyone
These green spaces stay open after school hours and are built to reflect the culture of the local community they serve, ensuring these spaces welcoming and well-loved.

A little girl sits on a rope in a playground.
Dig into Our Expertise

We’re committed to supporting communities that want to reimagine, renovate, and revitalize their schoolyards into green oases. Trust for Public Land’s expertise is dynamic and versatile, and includes:

  • Convening diverse stakeholders and organize meetings
  • Facilitating group discussions and decision-making processes
  • Developing and coordinating project plans
  • Providing data and project research
  • Offering technical expertise
  • Developing and implementing community outreach strategies
  • Helping secure funding
Explore New Opportunities

Through an analysis of every school in the state, we’ve mapped out which Minnesota communities would benefit most from parklike, accessible, and welcoming schoolyard spaces. You can use the tool to better understand the need to address health, equity, climate change, and education at our schools and within our communities. Ready to dig deeper? Explore our interactive maps, school data, and more.

 

Get in Touch with Our Minnesota Team

 

Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).

Additional funding is provided by the Center for Prevention at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota.

 

St. Paul Office

2610 University Avenue
Suite 300
St. Paul, MN, 55114
(651) 760-0179
minnesota@tpl.org

Associate Vice President, Minnesota State Director

651-999-5304
sophie.vorhoff@tpl.org