As parents we worry about our kids education, safety to and from school and their nutrition, but what about recess?

Each day in Eastern Idaho, hundreds of kids play on unsafe and outdated equipment, and it's leading to serious injuries.

Kids will be kids, and when play, they often give little thought to their safety.

That's why the playgrounds of today bare little resemblance to the playgrounds of our child hood.
The concrete flooring and metal slides proved deadly for thousands of children.

"We're not going to eliminate injuries mostly what were trying to do is make sure the injuries aren't heinous in nature," says Health and Safety Coordinator Guy Bliesner.

Today school districts and city park officials are racing to keep up with the ever changing rules that make the playgrounds of today a less hazardous place for fun.

"There's no set law for the playgrounds yet these are all recommendations but the biggest thing is to try to work with it go slow take the high risk things out first and work your way down," says Tim Arehart with Idaho Falls Parks and Recreation.

"A lot of the things we first picked we've had problems with," says Dora Erickson Elementary School Principal Bruce Cook.

"Places like the Boise valley because of the litigious nature of our society have chosen to do things like completely remove swings from the playground," says Bliesner.

Right now in Idaho schools alone officials are facing five separate lawsuits because of an injury on an out of date playground.

"As a whole the playground and parks and recreation industry is trying to get safer as far as the lawsuits and all that goes they have no choice," says Arehart.

"We need to exercise due diligence to avoid liability," says Bliesner.

Due diligence means eliminating what the national playground safety institute has coined the "Dirty dozen."

Of those 12 the big three are improper surfacing, lack of maintenance, and lack of space.

"The surfacing is probably the most important kids kick it out as they play or the wind moves it around and so that's just a constant maintenance thing we have to keep up with," says Arehart.

Right now Bonneville County School District is one of the worst offenders.

The Rigby School District was right their with them until one month ago and the Idaho Falls School District has about three schools that remain out of date.

"We're adding several new playground equipment all of them have to be up to code before well purchase them and the new playground equipment as well as the old all get new soft material underneath them in the pits so if the wind has blown off bark we get it back up to code," says Cook.

"What we have is stages and it meets code for when it was installed and then were trying to upgrade the older equipment to meet current code," says Bliesner.

For schools on a limited budget that's a problem because each time codes change so must the playgrounds and those changes definitely start to add up.

"It's a horrendously expensive under taking to meet the current code and who knows what the consumer product safety commission will mandate next year," says Bliesner.

By next fall both the Bonneville County and Idaho Falls School Districts promise major changes to all of their out of date playgrounds, and while it will likely cost about 90 thousand dollars they're glad to report everything will be close if not completely up to code.