New York City Schoolyards Converted to Public Playgrounds

Published in March 2026, this dataset catalogs New York City Department of Education schoolyards participating in the Schoolyards to Playgrounds initiative. The program improves access to open space by converting schoolyards for public use during non-school hours, with hundreds of sites enhanced through capital improvements. Each record represents a participating schoolyard, though boundaries are derived from secondary data.

Use Cases

• Analyze the distribution of converted schoolyards to identify neighborhoods with improved public open space access.
• Map schoolyard boundaries to assess proximity and walking distance for residents in different urban areas.
• Track program participation over time as schools join or exit, using the dataset's update cycle.

Strengths

• Dataset is current, with a last update timestamp of March 2026.
• Represents a city-wide initiative with hundreds of improved schoolyard sites.
• Data is provided in multiple machine-readable formats including CSV, JSON, RDF, and XML.

Limitations

• Data accuracy is limited by the scale and accuracy of the original secondary sources used to draw boundaries.
• Site-specific conditions require field verification, as indicated in the description.
• Key quantitative details like row count, column names, and data size are unavailable.

Provenance

Source

City of New York, via NYC Parks in collaboration with the Department of Education and the Trust for Public Land.

Collection Method

Schoolyard boundaries drawn from secondary data sources as part of the Schoolyards to Playgrounds capital improvement program.

Time Range

Covers participating schoolyards at the time of the dataset's publication (March 2026). The initiative began with PlaNYC 2007.

Freshness

Updated throughout the year as schools join or exit the program; last updated March 2026.

Geography

New York City, United States.