The Schoolyards to Playgrounds initiative began with PlaNYC 2007 as a way to expand public use at existing City facilities and improve access to open spaces during non-school hours which includes weekends, holidays, and during the summer.
NYC Parks, in collaboration with the Department of Education (DOE) and the nonprofit Trust for Public Land have improved hundreds of DOE operated schoolyards through capital improvements, including play equipment, painted sports surfaces, trees, and benches.
The program is an important approach to reaching the city’s target to getting more New Yorkers within walking distance to open-space. In many neighborhoods, these DOE schoolyards are one of the few resources that can be improved and provide publicly accessible open space.
Each record in this dataset represents a participating DOE Schoolyard at the time of the dataset's publication. The schoolyard's boundaries have been drawn in whole or part using secondary data. Data accuracy is limited by the scale and accuracy of the original sources. Site-specific conditions should be field-verified.
For more information on the Schoolyard to Playgrounds program, visit:
https://www.nycgovparks.org/greening/planyc/schoolyards
This dataset may be updated throughout the year as school's join or exit the program.