This is so obvious, how did I not think of this? Opening up school gym facilities for summer use

The Guardian reports and comments on an initiative in the UK to open school gyms when school is otherwise closed in order to help to fight childhood obesity and sedentary lifestyles.

-- "Schools sports facilities may open in summer to fight obesity"
-- "Opening up school sports facilities would give every child a healthy summer"

From the first article:

Downing Street is considering forcing schools to open over the summer so they can be used for activities to boost children’s fitness and stop them getting involved in crime.

Theresa May’s advisers have discussed the change with education, physical activity and sports experts who are lobbying for it.

Under the plan, schools in England would start hosting sporting, creative and other activities in their gyms, halls and on sports pitches, but not in classrooms. The drive is intended to help tackle childhood obesity, give under-18s somewhere to go and help tackle the “holiday hell” facing families needing childcare in July and August.

It happens I am working on a long range piece, building from entries such as "The bilingual Key Elementary School in Arlington County as another example of the "upsidedownness" of community planning," making the point that elementary schools need to be rearticulated as neighborhood-serving civic assets, as cultural centers. That doesn't mean shifting them away from being schools, but to broaden the impact of what they are doing.

One of the ideas that influenced me is how high schools in Sioux Falls, South Dakota open up their school library one day each week in the summer ("A Summer Of Reading For Sioux Falls Students," KELO-TV; "Sioux Falls students nudged toward summer books," Sioux Falls Argus-Leader).

Or how in Baltimore County, the schools and parks and recreation departments work together so that school recreational facilities are open to the public outside of school hours (and in the summer), funded not by the schools budget, but by the recreation department.

But also the idea, like with Key Elementary or the former Jesse Reno School in Northwest DC* which served the African-American community in the Reno City neighborhood-since eradicated for the creation of Fort Reno Park as well as the Woodrow Wilson-Alice Deal school complex, that schools often serve as community hubs--something that has been disconnected from schooling and neighborhoods with the rise of boundary-less schools, city-wide serving charter schools, etc.

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* American University's public history graduate program has a capstone course, like a planning studio where the students do a field project, and one of the student teams this year focused on Reno City.  (The other community projects were on the Park and Shop center in Cleveland Park, and on the neighborhood of Shepherd Park in Upper Northwest DC.)