By: Tiffany Han

What is the percentage of green space at your schoolyard? Well, for one school called Add B. Anderson School in West Philadelphia, its amount of green space used to be zero. The schoolyard was only concrete for a long time. Yet all of it got changed to a healthier yard thanks to a project that finished this year. It is making the schoolyard a cleaner place.

The project started five years ago, with a group of third graders in charge, and of course, parents’ supervision. Now there’s a running track, a basketball court, picnic tables, and new play equipment. Newly planted trees provide shade. There are also two new rain gardens with lots of plants. The gardens also keep stormwater from polluting the nearby Cobbs Creek and the Schuylkill River.