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Groveport-Madison Local School District Playground and Fencing 2025

Groveport Madison Schools renewed all six elementary playgrounds in one summer: five new PK-5 play structures in colors the district chose, fresh mulch surfacing at every site, and six-foot perimeter fencing with gates around the play areas. Prodigy delivered Asbury, Dunloe, Glendening, Groveport, Madison and Sedalia under a single 2025 contract, bought pre-bid through the TOP-C cooperative contract on one set of documents instead of six.

Groveport Madison Schools had six elementary playgrounds in six different states of repair and one summer to deal with all of them. Rather than take a site a year for six years, the district put the whole set into a single 2025 contract covering playground structures, mulch surfacing, and perimeter fencing and gates at Asbury, Dunloe, Glendening, Groveport, Madison and Sedalia elementary schools.

Five of the six — Asbury, Dunloe, Groveport, Madison and Sedalia — receive a new PK–5 play structure, with the color theme at each site chosen by the district. Glendening receives no new structure; its work is fencing, mulch and an asphalt patch at an identified trip hazard, installed to reduce the step-off onto the grass. Where existing equipment stood inside the footprint of a new structure, at Groveport and at Sedalia, the district removes it to clear the space.

Mulch is topped off in every playground area at all six sites. Six-foot fencing goes in along the runs identified on each site plan, with swing gates at the identified points; where new fence ties into an existing four-foot or five-foot run, the new fence matches the height it meets rather than stepping up against it. The result is five new structures, refreshed surfacing at six playgrounds, and a fenced, gated boundary around each play area — bought pre-bid on a TOP-C unit price contract, on one set of documents rather than six.

New playground structure with red slides at Groveport Madison

Climbing panels and towers on the Groveport Madison playground

Red double-slide play structure on a fresh mulch bed at a Groveport Madison elementary school

Technical Discussion

Where a playground fence goes: outside the use zone

Fencing six elementary playgrounds looks like a line on a site plan. The line has to be drawn from the equipment outward, because every piece of play equipment owns a ring of ground around it, and a fence, a gate post or a bench inside that ring is a hazard by definition.

Plan diagram of a play structure surrounded by a use zone of protective surfacing extending 6 feet in every direction, with the 6-foot fence and a swing gate located outside the use zone. Notes give the CPSC use zone rules for stationary equipment, swings and overlapping zones. — Figure 1 — Use zones are drawn from the equipment outward, and the fence line follows from them.

The use zone

The Consumer Product Safety Commission's Public Playground Safety Handbook calls this ring the use zone: the surfaced area under and around equipment where a child can be expected to land. For stationary equipment such as a climber or a composite play structure, it extends at least 6 feet in every direction from the perimeter of the equipment. Swings need far more. The zone in front of and behind a belt swing is twice the height of the pivot, so a swing hung from an 8-foot beam owns 16 feet of clear ground each way. Nothing hard belongs inside those areas, and the protective surfacing has to cover all of it.

Two structures can share ground, within limits

Use zones of neighboring stationary equipment may overlap, but the handbook sets the spacing: at least 6 feet between pieces when the adjacent play surfaces are no more than 30 inches high, and at least 9 feet when either is higher. That rule governs where a new PK-5 structure can sit relative to what is already on a playground, and it is why existing play springs at Groveport and older structures at Sedalia had to come out of the new footprint first.

Height and gates

The new fence is 6 feet tall on the runs the district marked, tall enough that it is a boundary and not a climbing challenge. Where a new run ties into existing 4-foot or 5-foot fence it matches that height, so the line reads as one fence and there is no step for a child to use as a foothold. Swing gates sit at the entry points the district marked on each site plan.

Before a fence is staked, mark the use zones on the ground with paint. The fence goes outside the paint and the surfacing goes to the edge of it.

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