Alejandro Leal has seen the gang graffiti painted on the swingsets at the Pioneer School playground. He has walked through the garbage near the park during recess.

“The playground is dirty,” said Alejandro, 12. “It’s unsafe for little kids.”

So Alejandro and five sixth-graders at the West Chicago school decided to do the park and community a favor.

Through donations from local businesses and faculty, the Pioneer students raised $1,000 and organized a facelift for the school’s playground. The sixth-graders along with parents and teachers will install new wood borders for the mulch and a new backboard and net for the basketball court. They already painted the playground’s swingset.

Pioneer teacher Kathy Grogan said local gangs and older children using the park at night cause much of the damage. The night before the first day of school in August, someone threw a brick into the school’s art room. Later, screens of windows on the school building were slashed.

Despite a police presence, the school building and playgrounds still are vandalized. Grogan said the children have grown accustomed to seeing litter in their playground, which has not been renovated in nearly 10 years.

“They see (graffiti) every day,” Grogan said. “They see it in the neighborhood. They’re not happy about it.”

The students created the project as part of the school’s gifted program curriculum. Although the students will leave Pioneer to attend middle school this fall, they did not want to leave the playground in such a state for future students at Pioneer, where 93 percent of the students are Hispanic-American and 66 percent come from lower-income families. The students wrote letters asking for support in English and Spanish and spoke before the school’s parents and teachers and local business leaders.

“We’ve had so much vandalism in our playground,” Pioneer Principal Gloria Trejo said. “With this project, the kids get a sense of ownership. They see how much damage has been done and they want to repair it.”

Ariana Vigil, 12, has a younger sister in kindergarten. She asked to install a wooden deck so handicapped students would be able to join their peers during recess.

“We wanted to do something to help the community,” Ariana said.

For their efforts, the students received a letter of commendation from President George Bush and West Chicago School’s regional superintendent. The students also placed first among Illinois elementary schools for a community problem solving program.

The students who participated are Alejandro Leal; Ariana Vigil; Claudia Villalba, 11; Carlos Lara, 11; Ana Ibarra, 12; and Wendy Garcia, 11.