The morning of Mothers’ Day, word spread quickly through the neighborhood: a blaze had been set sometime overnight on the playground of PS 29. Outside, a clump of parents and children pressed against the chain link fence, surveying the damage to the jungle gym.

“Why would someone do that?” one small girl asked her mother.

The painted metal was warped and blistered, the rubber matting charred, the slide melted into shreds of blue plastic. The climbing wall and another slide seemed to have vaporized altogether, and an acrid smell still hung in the air. Clusters of people came and went all day, shaking their heads in disbelief.

“I think it’s a good lesson,” I overheard one dad say, “that everything’s not so perfect.”

This “lesson” was especially harsh, though, given the fact that the brand-new playground had been so long-awaited, and the children had just begun to enjoy it to its fullest, after months of a torn-up school yard and the relentless winter weather. The community was still reeling from the recent discovery of a PTA theft and bracing for more budget cuts.<!--more-->

Who did this? What kind of person torches a playground? Speculations abounded, and rumors flew. The children–some scared, some confused, all disappointed–adjusted to using the rest of the schoolyard and avoiding the charred and cordoned-off area. Though we were assured the equipment would eventually be repaired, the non-profit group Out2Play, who had made the playground possible, said it would take at least six weeks for replacement parts to be manufactured.

Then, amid the week’s continued buzz: The Brooklyn Eagle reportedthat families of the teenagers responsible had stepped forward via a lawyer, to pay for the damage–which, they asserted, was the result of an “accident” (I guess the graffiti and other vandalism that appeared around the school that night were also “accidental”).

If there's a constructive lesson in all of this, maybe this crime will deter our young children from ever engaging in such dangerous mischief, knowing now how it feels to be on the receiving end. As principal Melanie Raneri Woods suggested, this could be an opportunity for the kids to learn a thing or two about "honesty and admitting when you've made a mistake." She hopes that the teens involved will "come forward and apologize" to the students of PS 29.

This incident, unfortunately, may be a hard lesson to the PS 29 community not to be so open and trusting with the playground, which stays open on weekends and evenings (some nearby parents have keys to the schoolyard). It has been a place for neighborhood children to meet, practice riding their bikes, shoot hoops, and sled on snow heaps after storms. But it doesn't always get locked up and occasionally becomes a place for teens to drink and smoke under the cover of dark. The night of the fire, a neighbor had observed the gate unlocked at midnight.

The school is looking into enhanced security measures, including better lighting and a system to ensure the yard gets locked. A couple of other schools in the area have had to start closing their schoolyards altogether on weekends–I hope ours can find a middle ground.