The ideal school will make the playground the very center of its life. The school in the Wirt plan covers a site of from ten to twenty acres. Actually the Emerson School in Gary has ten acres; Froebel has twelve; the new Tolleston site covers twenty acres. Of this ideal site of twenty acres, ten acres in front of the school-building are purchased by the city and maintained by it as an open public square or small park. The remaining ten acres are bought by the school for the building site and playgrounds. It is the intention in Gary to have these park-school playgrounds distributed over the city so that few families will live more than half a mile away from one of them. It is a cardinal principle of the Wirt plan that the parks and playgrounds of a city should be placed as _adjuncts of the schools_. It is the schools that they primarily serve and it is with the schools that they should be grouped. Millions of dollars have been wasted in the public-playground movement in this country through disregard of this fact. There is a good story of a Chicago playground instructor who, when asked if the playgrounds coöperated with the schools, replied, “Sure we do! If we see any kid on here between nine and three, we chase him off!” This is symbolic of the lack of intelligent coöperation between child-welfare agencies. It is this wasteful and ineffective situation which the Wirt plan remedies by boldly annexing park and playground to the school itself. A comparison of the Chicago playgrounds with the Gary school playgrounds shows the immensely greater public service rendered under the Wirt scheme. Chicago has one of the most elaborate systems of recreation parks and field-houses in the country. Yet in a district only _one fortieth_ the size of the Chicago district, one Gary school, providing for both children and adults, gave indoor gymnasium work to three times as many people; shower-baths to one third as many; outdoor gymnasium to an equal number; the use of swimming-pools to half as many; use of the assembly halls to four times as many; and to as many, the use of clubrooms and reading-rooms. Thus, in educating the child’s body, and giving him space to grow and play, the Wirt school enormously increased the opportunities of every one in the district, old and young, to secure the same advantages.