The Lynch Foundation and
The Boston Schoolyard
Initiative
A look into how The Lynch Foundation helped a public-private partnership
reclaim more than 130 acres of green space for educational use in Boston’s
schools.
3
Meaningful Schoolyard Use:
By building outdoor
classrooms in 32 sites across
the city, BSI harnessed the
For over 25 years, Carolyn and Peter Lynch have focused their
philanthropy on projects and organizations striving to enhance life in
Boston. The Boston Schoolyard Initiative is a standout among these
projects. Over an 18-year period, the initiative turned 130 acres of
barren asphalt land in Boston’s public schools into world-class green
spaces expertly designed for learning and community recreation. Thanks
to Carolyn and Peter Lynch, and the support of other key civic leaders in
Boston, BSI became one of the most innovative and far-reaching land
preservation strategies in the city’s recent history, annually touching the
lives of 30,000 public school students in every neighborhood.
power of schoolyards to
become tools for learning.
7
Thought Leadership: BSI
endowed Boston with one of
the most highly sophisticated
cadres of landscape
designers and architects for
schoolyards in the country.
BSI’s unique take on land preservation made it a highly attractive
investment for The Lynch Foundation. Just as attractive was the
opportunity to engage in a public-private partnership that could set a
strong precedent for robust collaboration between a broad range of
stakeholders in the city. The Lynch Foundation’s investment in this
public-private partnership continues to pay dividends today as cities and
towns across the country model their own community revitalization
initiatives after BSI’s model.
1
Early History: The Birth of a Public-Private Partne rship
By the mid-1990’s, decades of neglect had caused Boston’s 128
schoolyards, which are located on the grounds of public schools
throughout the city, to fall into terrible disrepair. At the time, the
public viewed the yards as an appallingly rundown patchwork of
broken pavements, torn fences, compacted soil and hazardous
play equipment. Some were known hotspots for illicit activity.
Others were simply used as parking lots. Rather than providing a
space for community recreation, the schoolyards were actively
contributing to the sense of blight and urban decay affecting
many neighborhoods.
Before and after: The Guild
Elementary School provides one
example of the remarkable physical
improvements BSI achieved in its
partner schools.
Beyond aesthetic concerns, the schoolyards’ decay had deep
implications for the students and communities intended to make
use of them. In the past few decades, mounting evidence had
linked the dearth of public green space in cities to the growing
obesity epidemic. In Boston, growing numbers of advocates were
pointing out the schoolyards’ deplorable state as an
environmental justice issue.
In 1994, the Boston GreenSpace Alliance and the Urban Land
Use Task Force, two advocacy groups, approached Mayor
Thomas M. Menino to initiate a dialogue about Boston’s public
school yards. Responding to community pressure, in 1995, Mayor
Menino appointed a cabinet-level taskforce charged with making
recommendations to address the problem. This committee laid
the groundwork for a project they called the “Boston Schoolyard
Initiative” (BSI). Established in, 1995 BSI became an independent
entity, funded in large part by City Hall, with the mission of
bringing the schoolyards back to life.
A number of ad hoc groups around the city of Boston had
attempted to rebuild schoolyards in years prior. Stalled by a lack
of capital, these renovations took between five and eight years to
complete. It was clear that in order to succeed, BSI would need
not only need to raise capital to supplement public funding, but
also develop a system to deliver renovations on time and at scale.
Yet the prospect of creating a streamlined renovation strategy
created more questions than it provided answers. If City
government hadn’t been capable of renovating schoolyards in the
2
The Lynch Foundation
2
Through 18 years of sustained
investment, the Boston Schoolyard
Initiative gradually reached its vision
of transforming schoolyards for over
30,000 students from every corner of
the city of Boston.
past, how would this municipally designed entity manage this time?
Would other investors trust the City of Boston to provide leadership
for such a complicated undertaking?
The Funder’s Collaborative and The Lync h Foundation
BSI needed a structure that allowed city government, private
foundations, and other experts to invest money into a common coffer
and share management responsibilities in an efficient manner. A unique
governance system was set up to meet these goals.
BSI’s structure placed The City of Boston and a group named the
Boston Schoolyard Funder’s Collaborative at the project’s helm, giving
these two entities shared ownership over the initiative’s policies, staff,
strategic planning and results. The Boston Schoolyard Funders
Collaborative was composed of foundation professionals who advised
BSI’s operations, supplemented the city’s financial investments with
private money, made grant decisions, and served as a steering
3
The Lynch Foundation
3
committee for strategic planning purposes. The Funder’s
Collaborative’s private philanthropy made it possible for BSI to exist
as an independent organization, and also supported BSI’s education
programs.
Throughout the project, the Funder’s Collaborative applied best
practices and efficiencies common in the private sector to public
financing allocated by City Hall. The Funder’s Collaborative advocated
on behalf of schoolyards, and through their own spending, ensured
that the city did not over time divert funding to other urgent
community needs. On its end, the city managed the schoolyard
renovations by hiring landscape architects and contractors, putting
construction contracts out for public bid, and overseeing the
schoolyards’ completions. While funding for physical improvements
primarily involved public money, BSI’s total investment ratio was
approximately three public dollars for each private dollar1.
By allowing this public-private decision-making structure, the city
shared a significant portion of control in BSI’s planning process with a
nonpublic entity (the Funder’s collaborative), but in return, could rely
on the privately funded BSI staff to manage critical phases of the
schoolyard renovations. The benefit to the city was significant. The
staff positions financed by BSI’s private partners engaged 88 schools
and their constituencies in renovation work, created educational
strategies to engage teachers at each school, and facilitated
programming on each schoolyard. While the governance system was
gradually refined, the marrying of disparate resources from the public
and private sectors remained at its core.
While funding for physical
improvements primarily involved
public dollars, BSI’s total
investment ratio was
approximately three public
dollars for each private dollar.
4
BSI was a key investment opportunity for The Lynch Foundation.
Carolyn and Peter Lynch are deeply committed to both educational
causes and historic preservation, and BSI was unique in its ability to
address both of these interests simultaneously. But BSI’s structure and
model proved to be just as fruitful of an investment. The Funders
Collaborative allowed The Lynch Foundation to flex the dollars it
invested in community preservation by guiding the allocation of public
funding that BSI commanded by the City of Boston. Moreover, it
allowed the Foundation to invest in an entity that had a much
broader reach than any single organization. Finally, Carolyn and Peter
believed that through its successes, BSI would set a precedent for
successful cross-sector partnerships in the City of Boston, and at best,
become a national model.
The Lynch Foundation
4
5
A Participatory Proce ss: Bringing
Community and Expe rts Together
BSI’s Funders Collaborative established a competitive
grant process to allocate resources for renovations.
At each school site selected for renovation, BSI
collaborated with child play experts, architects, and
local communities to ensure schoolyards were rebuilt
sustainably and in a manner that was responsive to
local needs. Foundation partners committed a
substantial amount of their own time to oversee the
grant-making process. The collaboration yielded
schoolyards reflecting both the knowledge of worldclass experts as well as the cultures and histories of
individual neighborhoods.
the entire community. More than three quarters of
the schools served by BSI report that their yard is
used before and afterschool, by community programs,
and by neighborhood children not affiliated with the
school.
BSI delivered outstanding renovations consistently
across all sites, turning previously barren lots into
beautiful public spaces all across the city of Boston.
Supporting Meaningful and Innovative
Educational Use of Schoolyards
One of BSI’s greatest strengths was its sustained focus
on using schoolyards as tools for learning. To achieve
this goal, BSI relied on a homegrown educational
BSI hoped that by encouraging community
participation in the planning process, neighborhoods
would develop a greater sense of ownership over
their public spaces. All community members
potentially impacted by a renovation were invited
into the development process as early as possible by
a community organizer hired with moneys from the
Funder’s Collaborative. In each community, neighborled groups selected a landscape architect from
among BSI’s team to co-create a master plan for their
schoolyard. After a year of planning and community
meetings, construction crews broke ground at each
site during the Boston Public Schools’ summer recess.
BSI invited neighbors to help with construction during
organized community days. As a result of this
intensive engagement process, many schoolyards
feature physical components unique to their
communities such as signs, decorations or ironwork
that make visual references to the neighborhoods’
history.
The planning and construction process secured buyin not only from parents, educators, and school staff,
but also after school programs, summer camps, local
merchants, crime watch groups, senior citizen groups,
and other community-based organizations. These
groups continue to provide stewardship and
programming that keep schoolyards lively places for
5
The Lynch Foundation
6
program that the Funder’s Collaborative supported through its
philanthropy. As BSI gained expertise in the myriad of ways that
schools used their yards, it pioneered new models to help teachers
take learning outdoors. A cornerstone of this effort became the
construction of “outdoor classrooms” in 32 of the 88 schoolyards that
BSI renovated. Including sample woodlands, an urban meadow,
planting beds, and instructional tools such as barometers and
thermometers, these classrooms were explicitly designed with strong
ties to science curriculum in BPS. As expected, science teachers who
used the classrooms found that interacting with objects in nature
helped to make biological concepts more concrete for their students.
While outdoor classrooms have proven useful for teaching science
curriculum, many schools have also used schoolyards to teach math,
English, and the arts. Interestingly, teacher surveys revealed that
outdoor classrooms have been particularly beneficial for English
Language Learners. As Kristin Metz, BSI’s director of education,
observed, “outdoors classrooms give ELL learners a more authentic
life exposure to vocabulary.”
In addition to outdoor classrooms, BSI also created materials and
implemented original professional development programs within the
Boston Public Schools to help teachers maximize schoolyard use.
Science in the Schoolyard™ and Outdoor Writers Workshop™ are
two original BSI professional development programs that have given
over 850 BPS teachers the skills to demonstrate core science
concepts outdoors. The practices included in both of these programs
eventually became institutionalized in district-wide curriculum, and
absorbed into the Full Option Science System, a national K-3 science
curriculum.
Including sample woodlands, an
urban meadow, planting beds,
and instructional tools such as
barometers and thermometers,
outdoor classrooms were
explicitly designed with strong ties
to science curriculum in BPS.
7
“Ensuring a sustainable future for
each schoolyard allowed us to
end the engagement in a
responsible way,” noted Katie
Everett.
The Final Chapter
A shared passion for BSI’s overarching goals brought stakeholders
including The Lynch Foundation together, ensuring their interests were
aligned throughout the project’s entirety. BSI came to a crossroads in
2013 as the Funder’s collaborative began questioning the role it should
play after final renovations were completed. “We knew we were
completing our last schoolyards, so we had to decide whether BSI
would continue on in maintenance mode, or whether it would close
its doors,” explained Katie Everett, Executive Director of The Lynch
Foundation.
After a strategic planning process that reviewed feedback from many
of the stakeholders involved, the BSI Funder’s Collaborative decided to
phase the initiative out, and to hand schoolyard maintenance off to the
City of Boston. “That was a very difficult decision,” Katie Everett
explained, “but very critical to the success of the donor collaborative.
It was important for us not to extend our role as funders.”
As BSI wound down, the Boston Public Schools Department took
ownership of funding the landscape consultant who today serves as
the schools’ chief outdoor classroom steward. A new Outdoor
Classroom Leadership Committee, which supports schools with
outdoor classrooms, emerged. Science in the Schoolyard professional
development programs, led by BPS teacher leaders, continued.
“Ensuring a sustainable future for each schoolyard allowed us to end
the engagement in a responsible way,” noted Katie Everett.
7
The Lynch Foundation
8
Thought Leadership
Between 1995 and 2013, BSI engaged over 20 architectural firms in
its community-driven restoration work. Due to the sheer volume of
renovations, during BSI’s run, Boston developed one of the most
highly sophisticated cadres of schoolyard landscape designers and
architects in the country. It also generated an unprecedented base of
knowledge about the preservation of recreational spaces in urban
settings. BSI’s breakthrough impact in this field was recognized by the
National League of Cities, which in 2008 awarded it first prize as
most innovative public-private partnership in the nation. BSI
architects have also gone on to win national distinctions with their
schoolyard designs. Many are currently exporting the knowledge
generated in Boston to communities around the country.
During his time in office, Mayor Menino fielded many frequent
inquiries from other municipalities interested in the Boston model.
To satisfy the demand for best practices, BSI collaborated with its
architects to develop a practical guide for those revamping
schoolyards elsewhere. These best practices are widely circulated
and highlighted in trade publications such as Asphalt to Ecosystems:
Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation (Village Press) and Moving
the Classrooms Outdoors: Schoolyard Enhanced Learning in Action
(Stenhouse Publishing).
In 2011, BSI helped to form the International School Grounds
Alliance (ISGA). BSI became part of the ISGA's inaugural steering
committee, which is dedicated to creating and caring for school
grounds that support children's “learning, play and wellbeing” around
the world. In this way, BSI became a key player in the renaissance of
play spaces for children in America and around the world.
Harnessing Efficiencies
Speaking of The Lynch Foundation’s involvement in this publicprivate partnership, Katie Everett remarked, “such partnership can be
complex, but harnessing the flexibilities of the private sector, and
employing them for the public good—such as reviving our city’s
schoolyards—can deliver an outsized return on investment.” Indeed,
the public-partnership that made BSI possible highlighted Boston’s
best: it provided much-needed reinforcement to city officials, it
8
The Lynch Foundation
9
answered the calls of community groups, and it engaged
architectural professionals in civic life. It also allowed foundations to
contribute not only their funding, but also their programmatic
expertise to make physical renovations meaningful in the context of
their communities. “The involvement of private sector
philanthropies,” explained Mariella Tan Puerto, Senior Program
Officer at the Barr Foundation and chairperson of the Funder’s
Collaborative, “has leveraged more than $20 million from the city
government to address a critical need. I think it’s fair to say that
without the public-private partnership, the revitalization of the
schoolyards might have well been overlooked or triaged in favor of
other municipal needs.”
By the numbers, by 2013, BSI reclaimed 130 acres for learning and
play, planted 200 trees, created 100 plant beds, installed 75 play
structures, and improved outdoor spaces for 30,000 students each
year. Beyond this immediate impact, the lessons learned through
BSI set the bar for cities and towns around the country, and
continues to fuel a larger movement to save place spaces worldwide.
“I think it’s fair to say that without
the public-private partnership, the
revitalization of the schoolyards
might have well been overlooked
or triaged in favor of other
municipal needs.”
-Mariella Tan Puerto, Barr
Foundation Senior Program
Officer
Sources:
1. Lopez, R., R. Campbell, and J. Jennings. 'The Boston Schoolyard Initiative: A
Public-Private Partnership For Rebuilding Urban Play Spaces'. Journal of Health
Politics, Policy and Law 33.3 (2008): 617-638.
9
The Lynch Foundation