Running toward the future
Michael Miller
It’s been 1962 for the last 43 years at Sonora Elementary School, as
the blacktop and playground equipment have cracked and rusted since
the school’s inception.
Next fall, though, the Costa Mesa campus could sport a sleek new
backyard. On Friday, the Sonora PTA held a jog-a-thon to help raise
funds for playground construction, including asphalt, swings, a slide
and a sun shade over the jungle gym.
“We are ecstatic,” Sonora office secretary Leslie Rolsheim said.
“Everybody can hardly wait. The equipment we have is really, really
old -- probably since the beginning of the school.”
Over the last few years, the PTA has accumulated nearly $25,000
through gift-wrapping, candy sales and other fundraisers. To reach
the amount needed to renovate the playground, the parents needed a
few extra thousand dollars -- and they enlisted the students’ help.
Each of the school’s 360 students ran in the jog-a-thon, some with
pledges and others with flat donations. During 25-minute periods on
Friday, teachers brought their classes out to run laps around the
field, with orange slices and water on hand to keep blood sugar high.
After students hand in their donations Friday, the school plans to
hand out prizes for the most laps and the most money raised. Mette
Segerblom, Sonora’s PTA president, said the playground renovation
would complement the Measure A work on the school, which the district
recently finished.
“The focus has been on playground equipment for a while, and we’re
getting toward the end of that,” she said.
Next year, she added, the PTA plans to raise additional funding to
pay for equipment on the kindergarten playground, which is mostly
barren.
For students, the jog-a-thon provided a welcome added recess
during the school day. First-grader Julian Jackson, 6, got five
family members to pledge for him, and he said he planned to run 40
laps in the event. Although an avid exerciser, Julian said he rarely
went jogging.
He does BMX exercising, he explained. “You ride your bike and that
kind of stuff.”
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