After taking last summer off due to covid-19 concerns, the Murrysville Recreation Department is hoping to bring back a revamped version of its annual summer playground program.
The primary changes to the program — which has hosted children ages 6-12 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at a rotating schedule of municipal parks — would be fewer locations and a bump in fees from $5 per day to $8 per day for long-term participants.
“The program has historically run in the red, to be able to pay staff and supply costs,” recreation Director Carly Greene said. “We’ve increased compensation for our three staff members this year in hopes that they’ll enjoy their summer, work really hard for us and want to come back, and grow the program.”
To that end, Franklin Regional officials have agreed to push out information about the program via the school district’s social media channels, Mayor Rege Synan said.
“We’re going to push it out not only in the schools but on Facebook, fliers and bulletin boards in the park,” Greene said. “I really feel that there’s a need for kids to have an opportunity to be outside with some unstructured, supervised play. They get to play games, sports, do crafts — we want to encourage them to be off their screens.”
Greene said the fee hike will help cover the cost of wages and supplies, “so that we can at least break even on this program this year. That comes to $2 an hour for supervised play and programming with staff. We think that’s very reasonable.”
This year’s program will operate Mondays and Tuesdays at Bear Hollow Park, and the remainder of the week at Murrysville Community Park.
“Bear Hollow is centrally located in the middle of town, and Murrysville Community Park has everything they could need,” Greene said.
Both parks also offer better opportunities to store supplies for the program, as opposed to keeping them in a staff vehicle.
There is a daily drop-in fee of $10 per child.
Pre-registration for a full eight weeks is $320, and can be done at MurrysvillePArecreation.com.
“We’d really like to see it be successful,” Greene said. “Kids need to get out in the parks, be with their friends, and not on their screens.”
