Playing dress up: Tomahawk Elementary School in Olathe gets a colorful makeover

Sometimes, good things descend from the top of an organization. But other times, it takes people with a passion among the rank-and-file to make a change.

So it was with the asphalt playground at Tomahawk Elementary School in Olathe, where an idea to touch up faded paint last summer turned into something much bigger.

“I had two staff members ask if they could dress up the playground,” Julia Baucum, the school’s principal, said in a news release. “Offie Morris, a paraeducator and parent in our building, and kindergarten teacher Christi Gottschalk worked together for their vision and follow-through.”

In light of the coronavirus pandemic, Morris said, they included elements that students could enjoy with “minimal touching.”

Instead of merely repainting a school bus feature on the playground, they asked fifth-grader Owen Beckman to get involved, too. Morris gave the bus a new coat of yellow paint, but the Kansas Chiefs mascot and a football — thrown fast enough to leave a fiery contrail — were created by Owen, who also added Royals mascot Sluggerrr to the baseball benches.

“I painted the remainder of the bus with a nod to the Chiefs’ Super Bowl win,” Gottschalk said.

Also involved were two members of Morris’ family, teacher Gayla Posch and paraeducator Stacey Jurgensmeyer. Because of the sweat equity, the playground came together with only a few hundred dollars from the school budget.

Gottschalk painted a sensory path as well as a caterpillar and a big T with tiger stripes.

“Just me and my paintbrush doing what I love to do,” she said. “I looked for ideas online and then sketched out my ideas on paper. When I first figured out what an artist would charge for the kindergarten area and equipment area, it would be a minimum of $1,500 for their time.”

To minimize competing foot traffic, the painters worked early in the morning and into the evening.

“One of my favorite parts of this was the conversations with people who stopped by: the dog walkers, kids coming to play, or just neighbors who stopped to see the action,” Morris said.

A few visitors brought beverages or pillows to put under the painters’ knees.

Morris regards the project as therapy during the early months of the pandemic.

“It was a stress reliever to come paint and feel like with all the unknown and sadness, that this would bring joy to so many,” she said.

This story was originally published January 28, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Playing dress up: Tomahawk Elementary School in Olathe gets a colorful makeover."