ICYMI: Winthrop School Playground Fundraising Campaign Planning Several Events

The fundraising campaign designed to bring an all-new playground to students at the Winthrop School will celebrate the start of a new school year with minions.

“I’m sorry, what?” you may be asking.

Operation Playground is bringing “Despicable Me” to an outdoor screen on Friday, Sept. 11 as the group welcomes students back to school and officially kicks off its efforts to raise $150,000 by February 2016 for an all-new playground at the Winthrop School.

“The community of Winthrop recognized that the playground was no longer sufficient for the school’s needs, as many of the pieces of equipment are over 30 years old,” said Stacy Hughes, a spokeswoman for the campaign. “In addition, Winthrop has a fantastic amount of space behind their school; however, all of the equipment is so spread out, from the far left to the far right - often limiting where the children are allowed to go. Operation Playground hopes to build one central playground that all students can access.”

That goal requires money -- and all of that money needs to come from private donations as no town money is available for the project, according to Hughes.

“This is solely a private fundraising campaign,” Hughes emphasized. “There are no funds coming from the Town budget, the H-W School District or even Winthrop’s operating budgets. So we will rely heavily on grants, Brick Orders, Events and Corporate Sponsorships to reach our goal.”

Already, Cumberland Farms and other community partners have helped raise some funds, and Winthrop families were made aware of the fundraiser at the end of the 2014-15 school year. Still, Hughes said, the efforts will ramp up considerably this fall with movie night being the first of several planned events.

The adults organizing the campaign are committed to involving students as much as possible in the project, Hughes added. She explained that students will be asked to assist with the fundraising, but will perhaps also get to help choose as a school some of the smaller pieces of playground equipment, assuming the fundraising goals are met.

If the funds are raised by late February, Hughes said the hope is to order the equipment soon thereafter and have it installed over the summer so it can open to students at the start of the 2016-17 school year.

Outdoor Movie Night will take place Sept 11 (rain date of Sept. 12) on the current Winthrop playground. The event begins at 6:30 p.m. and the movie will start at 7:30 p.m. The cost is $20 per family. Drinks, popcorn and candy will also be available for purchase, as will bricks that will be installed on the finished playground.