The staff at Sunrise Elementary School in Sturgeon Bay is asking you to keep their students from knowing how close they are to getting a new playground. The Sturgeon Bay School District received an $80,000 grant from the Destination Door County Community Investment Fund to support Sunrise's efforts to build a new ADA-accessible playground for its students and nearby community members. The new playground would have a poured-in rubberized surface and equipment to allow people of all ability levels to play together. Principal Katie Smullen says the dream of building this playground started in 2019 before she took over the school's reins. The students have also bought in, donating $4,000 of their lemonade stand summer school program profits towards the playground. Smullen says the grant makes them highly close to realizing the dream.

Smullen says they are about $15,000 away from building the playground at Sunrise Elementary, but they are still going. She says the playground at Sawyer School is 25 years old, and it is also in need of replacement. The grant was part of the over $202,000 awarded by Destination Door County last week through its Community Investment Fund. Other projects at least partially funded by the program include $92,850 to build a new open-air pavilion at John Miles County Park in Sturgeon Bay, $22,500 to the Friends of Potawatomi State Park for an accessible kayak launch, and more than $7,000 to address parking lot lighting at Bjorklunden in Baileys Harbor.