While school is now out for the summer, students at Bel-Aire Elementary School were able to enjoy the new inclusive playground just before the end of the school year.

Bel-Aire and Tullahoma City Schools officials were joined by community partners on Thursday, May 21, to celebrate the completion and opening of the inclusive playground with an official ribbon cutting, courtesy of the Tullahoma Area Chamber of Commerce.

Following the ribbon cutting, attendees met under the front awning at Bel-Aire to enjoy light refreshments and remarks from Bel-Aire’s principal, Dr. Clint Epley.

Epley thanked everyone on behalf of all of the students in the community for their support in making the inclusive playground possible.

“We couldn’t have done this without the support of the community,” Epley said. “There are so many people to thank for their contributions to make this project happen, and this project totaled nearly $190,000, which is quite the project for a small elementary school to pull off in about a year.”

The inclusive playground has been in the works for the last few years, with funding raised through school events, such as Bel-Aire’s annual Walk-a-Thon, which raised about $50,000, and donations from community partners like the Highland Rim Kiwanis Club, which donated $20,000 in October.

Along with the donations and fundraiser, Epley said the school had a grant through the state that helped to fund the rubber pad for the playground, which is made of tires from Tennessee.

“The grant from the state provided us with funding 80% of the project, as long

as we used tires from Tennessee to recycle them,” Epley said.

Epley then listed some of the organizations that made huge contributions to the playground, which include the Highland Rim Kiwanis Club, the Tullahoma Education Foundation, the Dustin Lynch Foundation and the Dusty Elam Foundation.

“This whole town, be it everywhere I would go over the last year, asked me about this playground project,” he said. “It really hit my heart because it opened my eyes to what can happen when a community sees a purpose in a project and sees value in investing in our children and in something as awesome as playing and learning.”

Epley thanked his family for listening to talk about the project for the last year, the Tullahoma City Schools district officials for their support, and the Tullahoma City Schools Board of Education for signing off on the project. He also thanked Bel-Aire Assistant Principal Dr. Bethany McKee for kick-starting the project when she came to Bel-Aire three years ago, when she recommended having a rubber service around one swing so a child could access the swing.

Two years later, we really started brainstorming how we could pull this off, and it turned into much, much more,” Epley said. “She planted the seeds, and there’s a whole lot of credit for bringing this to reality.”

Epley shared that the children at Bel-Aire have been able to enjoy the playground for the last couple of weeks.

“We have students here of all different backgrounds and all different needs, and it’s been a true joy to watch all of them be able to play, because that’s not always the case when they go out into the world and to experience playgrounds as they may travel,” he said.

He thanked everyone again and said he hopes to see more projects like the playground out of the state through grants and partnerships.