Who else is absolutely OVER the sand from RLC students shoes and clothes pouring into your car, house, beds, carpet etc.?! 
I know I am. 

This is not meant in any negative capacity aimed toward the school or any of their organizations. RLC is an amazing school and we are so happy our little one is there. This has been discussed previously, I am told, about doing away with the sand- but I’d like to revisit it and use the petition to gauge interest from fellow parents like me. I have a few contacts that (if there is interest) could help make this happen. 

Kids love sandboxes- parents do not.
This is more than an inconvenience though and cause of additional cleaning. It’s not sanitary. Sand playgrounds have been studied and are notorious for being unsanitary and the cause of many illnesses. Animals relieve themselves in sand more than any other filler, and it harbors germs and bacteria.

My first grader comes home to his 1 year old and 2 year old little sisters, pouring disgusting sand literally EVERYWHERE, nearly every day. I don’t want any of them, nor any other parent’s sweet babies, to potentially obtain a parasite.

DID YOU KNOW:

“When public health–testing organization NSF International sampled 26 different items in public places—toys at doctors’ offices, children’s library books, playground sandboxes—for a 2008 study on germs, they found that sandboxes were far and away the germiest of all, harboring nearly 2,000 times more bacteria, yeast, and mold per square inch than the door handles of public restrooms!!

Like giant litter boxes, uncovered sandboxes invite animals—raccoons, dogs, cats—to use them as bathrooms, which essentially turns them into giant parasite Petri dishes. And that’s bad, because even if your kids don’t eat handfuls of sand like mine do, they probably do put their fingers in their mouths an awful lot—and parasites are transmitted by what is not-so-euphemistically called the fecal-oral route. Parasitic worms galore.

OK, I know you’re rolling your eyes, thinking: But most kids who play in sandboxes don’t get sick. Fair enough. But it’s also possible that kids are getting sick and we just don’t know it. Doctors are not required to notify the government when they diagnose these infections—so no one is closely monitoring them or their epidemiology—and many kids who get parasites probably either never get diagnosed with them, as symptoms can be mild and spontaneously resolve, or their diagnoses are kept quiet.“

“Consider what happened when researchers at McGill University tested the surface sand from sandboxes at 10 local day care centers in 1991. Two of the sandboxes, they discovered, were contaminated with eggs of a parasite called Toxocara. Once a child eats them, the eggs hatch in his or her body into larvae, which can burrow into the liver, lungs, central nervous system, or eyes. Sometimes the infection is asymptomatic, but when it’s not and is not properly diagnosed and treated, it can cause liver damage, lung damage, or blindness. (An earlier 1979 study found that a whopping 39 percent of residential sandboxes in Kansas contained Toxocara eggs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, research suggests that 1 out of every 7 Americans over the age of 6 has been infected with this parasite.)

The McGill study also reported that one of the sandboxes with Toxocara eggs was co-contaminated with the eggs of Ascaris, a parasitic worm that can, occasionally, cause intestinal blockage and stunted growth. Another parasite kids can get from sandboxes is Toxoplasma gondii, which is spread by cats and believed to chronically infect more than 1 out of every 6 Americans. In one study, researchers in Japan spied on three urban sandboxes at night using camcorders and found that over the course of five months, cats pooped in the boxes 961 times, and dogs pooped in them 11 times. They calculated that one of the sandboxes contained more than 1.5 million viable Toxoplasma eggs per square foot of sand, yet children need only ingest a single egg to get sick.“

Articles:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/10/sandboxes-are-full-of-germs-can-cause-parasitic-worms.html#:~:text=When%20public%20health%E2%80%93testing%20organization,2%2C000%20times%20more%20bacteria%2C%20yeast%2C

 

https://www.webmd.com/children/news/20170707/neighborhood-sandbox-a-breeding-ground-for-germs

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sandbox-breeding-ground-for-germs/

 

https://lifehacker.com/think-twice-before-sending-your-kids-to-play-in-the-san-1737020210

https://www.healthychildren.org/English/safety-prevention/at-play/Pages/Safety-in-the-Sandbox.aspx

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kids-eating-sand-risks-feces_l_610874ffe4b0497e67026e95/amp

My plan is to see how many parents/staff/others agree with me, and take my findings to school staff and PTO, if I’m not alone in this. I volunteer to help obtain cost analysis research on mulch/other and what the maintenance costs would be. 
I've been told PTO considered plastic mulching before, but it was cost prohibitive.

Fundraisers are done for fans and other requests…There has to be a way to get rid of this sand. Let’s make it happen! 

Please sign my petition! Save future parents from these headaches!