Last week, contractors broke ground for renovations of the playground at Bancroft Elementary School in Mount Pleasant. The new playground, due to open this fall, will be missing one set of features planners had hoped for: swing sets. Modern safety regulations require extensive clear space around swings, with wood chips or rubber mats to protect flying children. “We would have loved to have swing sets, but we just didn’t have the room,” says Iris Rothman, coordinator of PlayStart, a community group that’s raising money for the project. Another piece of equipment for the park—a toy fire engine on a spring, which kids had requested—ran afoul of regulations as well. “It was 2 inches too high,” says Rothman. But a salesperson for the Danish manufacturere who was working with PlayStart finally convinced the company to create a shorter fire engine for Bancroft. —Annys Shin