Shade Trees for Preschool Play Yard

I am looking for suggestions for medium sized shade trees for a newly built preschool in inland Orange County, California. The yards on the south side are very exposed and we will be using a combination of approaches like trellises, shade sails and evergreen and deciduous trees. Flowering trees are okay as long as I know if they have pods/seeds/cones that would drop and be a chocking hazard for our infants and toddlers. Our preschoolers would love the pods, etc.

In my opinion the very best tree for the "Pods" is the Cassia leptophyla www.themulch.com/component/plants/?view=plants&plantid=213

It's a bushy tree with big beautiful yellow flowers that turn into giant long seed pods you can see a photo here producefromproduce.blogspot.com/2011/05/seed.html . The tree is also a butterfly host for Sulphur butterflys.

It does lose it's leaves about this time of year and then starts regrowing right away. So it's not a clean tree. I see it in San Diego a lot in the medians of side walks.

Just a thought - one thing to consider is that trees with pods also have things that fall out of the sky.

Another great shade tree is a camphor tree, they get real big but I don't think they have pods.

A tree that should do great in that area and is absolutely bullet proof is a carrotwood tree - they are often sold with multiple trunks and those turn into excellent spreading shade trees and they grow pretty quickly.

I hope that helps.