By Ashley McGuire
When a recent out of town visitor stepped onto my daughter’s school playground, she gasped at the springy surface underneath her feet. I explained that like so many schools and parks around the country, her school had used recycled rubber tires for a playground surface, a move that dramatically reduces scrapes and breaks when kids inevitably fall while playing. It has the added benefit of being eco-friendly and a great way to teach kids about recycling.
Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments about one school’s years-long quest to implement the same benefit for its own students. It’s hard to imagine why a pre-k playground surface would be controversial enough to make it to the highest court in America. And yet, as Amy Howe of SCOTUS Blog put it of the case Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, “the stakes in the case could be far bigger than playground surfaces.”
