Winton Hills Academy is set to open a new playground with a ribbon-cutting, giving students at the Cincinnati Public Schools campus a new place to play after years of the school going without one. The new equipment is just one piece of a sprawling campus overhaul that also brought the elementary school a STEM lab, indoor murals, an outdoor learning garden and a public health clinic.
The playground was constructed as part of the 17th annual Community Makeover, a single-day volunteer event held on July 23, co-led by the Reds Community Fund, Procter & Gamble, and the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, according to MLB.com. More than 600 volunteers turned out for the work day, which revitalized six separate project sites across the Winton Hills neighborhood in a single afternoon. The playground structures themselves were designed and installed in partnership with Playground Equipment Services, per the same outlet.
As WKRC reports, the new equipment gives Winton Hills Academy a new place for its students to play, with the ribbon-cutting marking the formal opening of the space. The build did not stop at the playground fence, however. The school also received a new STEM laboratory sponsored by GE Aerospace and indoor murals created with local artists Arte and Brent Billingsley during the summer renovation, MLB.com's press release coverage notes.
An Outdoor Classroom Grows Alongside the Play Space
Perhaps the most unusual addition is what organizers are calling the Tree School, a first-of-its-kind Urban Learning Garden built in partnership with the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. According to the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, the garden features 12 outdoor classrooms surrounded by more than 100 trees across 30 species, accessible to both students and the wider public. The garden sits adjacent to the new playground on the Winton Hills campus.
The school's health office was also expanded during the makeover into a public-accessible Community Health Center, built in partnership with healthcare provider WinMed, according to Cincinnati Public Schools. The district describes WinMed as a local federally qualified health center network, meaning the clinic can serve families in the surrounding neighborhood, not just students enrolled at the school.
A Decade-Long Request From the Principal's Office
Principal Ben Fulton, who has led Winton Hills Academy for a decade, said he had requested a playground and school health center for years to give students a safe sanctuary in an underserved neighborhood, according to a statement carried by MLB.com. The scale of this year's investment reflects that long-standing ask, arriving as a coordinated package rather than a single piece of equipment.
The Community Makeover initiative itself has deep roots in Winton Hills. The regional program originally launched there in 2010 at the CPS Jacobs Center and Brandon Phillips Field, making the 2026 project a return to its founding site after 16 years, per MLB.com's reporting. The program has grown considerably in scope since that first year.
A Neighborhood That Has Grappled With Violence
The push for a safe, enclosed play space is inseparable from the neighborhood's recent history. Hoodline previously reported on the death of a 5-year-old boy, a Winton Hills Academy student killed in a drive-by shooting near the school in 2024. A fatal shooting elsewhere in the neighborhood was also reported by Cincinnati police in January. That backdrop underscores why school leadership has framed campus investment as a matter of student safety, not simply recreation.
Winton Hills Academy serves approximately 307 students in prekindergarten through sixth grade, with 99% identifying as racial minorities and 95% qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, according to Public School Review, citing National Center for Education Statistics figures. Under Cincinnati Public Schools' Phase 2 facility restructuring plan for the 2025-26 academic year, the school was also designated to transition to a Pre-K through 5th grade configuration while updating attendance boundaries to absorb students from nearby Pleasant Hill Academy, per the district.
Taken together, the new playground, STEM lab, murals, learning garden and health clinic amount to a multi-site campus transformation built in a single volunteer push, rather than an isolated construction project. For a school community that has weathered tragedy in recent years, the ribbon-cutting represents a tangible answer to a request its principal has been making for a decade.
