{"id":167291,"date":"2026-02-06T22:07:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T22:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/167291\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T22:07:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T22:07:41","slug":"federal-funds-will-pay-for-new-kids-playground-at-lbccs-pch-campus-long-beach-post-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/167291\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal funds will pay for new kids’ playground at LBCC\u2019s PCH campus \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Children of the Long Beach City College community will soon get a new playground, funded by $1.5 million in federal dollars.<\/p>\n

In a press conference on Friday, Congressman Robert Garcia, D-Long Beach, joined LBCC leaders to announce that the funding will be used to purchase and install new play structures and outdoor equipment on the Trades, Technology, and Community Learning Campus on Pacific Coast Highway. The playground will be installed in 2027 and designed for children ages 3 to 5 who attend pre-school at LBCC.<\/p>\n

\u201cA safe and engaging playground is essential to healthy child development,\u201d said Uduak-Joe Ntuk, LBCC board of trustees president. The new playground also represents an investment in the LBCC students, employees and community members who rely on childcare on campus, Ntuk said.<\/p>\n

About a quarter of LBCC students in 2023 were parents<\/a>. For those families, it can be hard to access outdoor play for kids while balancing work, school and the difficulty of living in neighborhoods without nearby parks, Superintendent-President Mike Mu\u00f1oz said. These upgrades will provide kids with access to safe, supervised outdoor space while their parents can work and learn at the college, Mu\u00f1oz said \u2014 part of LBCC\u2019s ongoing effort to reduce barriers to education for student-parents.<\/p>\n

LBCC\u2019s forthcoming playground is the latest in more than a dozen that Garcia has helped revamp in Long Beach. \u201cI\u2019ve been on a mission since I was mayor to replace every single tot lot,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n

And LBCC\u2019s outdoor play area is due for improvements. The current climbing play structure was built for the college two decades ago, said Stacey Smith-Clark, manager of the child development center. The structure has one slide and a too-short climbing wall \u2014 \u201cthey take two steps and they\u2019re up,\u201d Smith-Clark said of the children.<\/p>\n

She envisions a structure that allows kids to develop their gross motor skills by \u201cjumping and climbing and swinging\u201d on new equipment, she said. Already, outdoor play is a big part of the education at the child development center, where children spend at least three hours outside: \u201cWe really believe in Southern California that children should be outdoors most of the time, in this fresh air,\u201d Smith-Clark said, adding that the kids are looking forward to equipment that is bigger and more challenging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Children of the Long Beach City College community will soon get a new playground, funded by $1.5 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-167291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-long-beach","9":"tag-long-beach-headlines","10":"tag-long-beach-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}