At their neighborhood pool in West Philadelphia, Markyda Anderson’s little boys couldn’t wait to get again in. They’d grown bored with enjoying in a close-by splash pad as lifeguards performed a periodic examine of chlorine ranges. So as soon as the break was over and swimmers had been welcome once more, they dashed again and — plunk, plunk — into the water they went.
“It provides the children one thing to do — one thing optimistic,” mentioned Ms. Anderson, a 38-year-old nursing assistant cooling off with Isaiah, 7, and Elijah, 3, on the Tiffany Fletcher Recreation Middle within the metropolis’s Mill Creek part. With out the pool, Isaiah piped up, “I’d keep inside and play Fortnite on Xbox.”
It was scenes like this, at dozens of city-run swimming pools, that despatched 71-year-old Pleasure Watson right into a match of anger for her personal Overbrook Park neighborhood, roughly a mile away. Subsequent to her rowhouse, the one with the Barack Obama mural on the facet, the Charles Baker Playground pool has not been open since July 2019.
“They are saying it’s a lifeguard scarcity,” Ms. Watson mentioned Friday. “My query is, you’ve received all these different swimming pools open, and you may’t swap the lifeguards round?”