Sudbury's ugliest schoolyard contest won by 3 schools

It's not a title that every school would necessarily want, but the winners have been named for the 2015 Ugliest Schoolyard Contest in Greater Sudbury.

Cyril Varney Public School, Churchill Public School and cole publique Jean-thier-Blais will split a $50,000 prize and use the money to dig up asphalt and replace it with grass, trees and plants.

At Churchill Public School in New Sudbury, students currently play tag on gravel as there isn't a lot of green space on the property.

Kindergarten student Lunden Campbell Runia said he has ideas on how to change that.

"Plant some vegetables, plant some more trees so we can climb," he said.

His teacher Dawn Hattie said she wants the yard to inspire students.

"One of the words that we heard a lot of when we were putting the entry together was uninspired," she said.

"The children talked a lot about how they would go outside and they were bored. There wasn't a lot do to."

Hattie said the school believes the children deserve a playground where "they'll flourish and prosper."

Cultural component

The schoolyard makeover will include a cultural component at CyrilVarneyPublic School.

The New Sudbury elementary school has a large yard withgreenspace that includes a soccer field and baseball diamond.

Some of the funding from the contest will be used to spruce up the playground structure and plant a hedge to keep wayward soccer balls from rolling out on the road.

But it will alsoallow staff and students to install aOjibwemedicine wheel using stones and plant a sacred herb garden consistent with First Nations culture, said vice-principal JanelleBast.

"We have a really large First Nations population [at the school], so we wanted to bring in some of their culture to our yard as well," she said.

Getting students involved with re-greening

Since 2005, the Ugliest Schoolyard Contest and its sponsors have helped 36 schools create greener and healthier schoolyards, according to the city.

"We thought that it'd be nice to get students involved in the re-greening effort in their own yards," Tina McCaffrey, who is with Greater Sudbury's Re-Greening Advisory Panel, the group that chose the winners.

"So, school yards are a great way to do that because they do seem to be very bleak, full of either asphalt or gravel and not much else."

This year's contest winners will begin revitalizing their yards over the summer.