President Barack Obama announced a new program today to provide all fourth-grade students and their families free admission to national parks and federal lands for a full year.
The Every Kid in a Park program, designed to get schoolchildren outdoors, will start in the fall of 2015 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the National Parks Service.
In addition, the National Park Foundation will dole out transportation grants for children to visit parks, public lands and waters.
“We want every fourth-grader to have the experience of getting out and discovering America,” Obama said at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy in Chicago. “We want them to see the outside of a classroom too; see all the places that make America great. Put down the smartphone for a second. Put away the video games. Breathe in some fresh air and see this incredible bounty that’s been given to us.”
Family admission to national parks usually costs $80 for an annual pass. Christy Goldfuss, a senior advisor at the Council on Environmental Quality, said the overall increase in visitation will make up for the loss of revenue.
Obama uneviled the “ Every Kid in a Park” program on the same day he designated three new national monuments in Illinois, Colorado and Hawaii.
While visiting Chicago Thursday, he designated the Pullman neighborhood on the city's south side a national moument for its significance in labor and civil rights movements. The other two sites are Browns Canyon in Colorado and a former internment camp site in Hawaii.
Obama is using his authority under the Antiquities Act. He has previously used his authority under the Antiquities Act to create or expand more than a dozen other national monuments, including the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument in the south-central Pacific Ocean - the largest marine reserve in the world that is completely off limits to commercial resource extraction.