Albany High School has just been named a "failing school," at risk of being taken over by the state. The administration's response: let's spend $2.5 million on a new high school athletic complex! The Board will discuss this proposal at tonight's meeting, and may vote as early as March 5 to put a referendum authorizing this project before voters at the budget vote in May.
Precious little information has been provided about the new project - it's the last four pages of the Proposed Capital Project presentation here. Lots of exclamation marks, very little data about why this project is needed (what is inadequate about our current facilities?) or what the long-term fiscal impact might be.
http://www.albanyschools.org/district/board/2014-15/2-26/Proposed_capital_project.pdf
The most expensive item in this project is an artifical turf field, with an estimated cost of almost $1.4 million. However, it's by no means clear that artifical turf is better for sports fields than well-maintained natural turf. Artificial turf's lifespan is only about 10 years in the best-case scenario, so by 2025, we would need to spend another few million on a replacement. Also, the artifical turf would require careful maintenance to stay in good shape for the entire 10 years - with a history of cutting costs whenever possible and deferring necessary maintenance, will the district necessarily do what has to be done to keep the new turf nice? After all, state funds can be used for capital projects like installing the turf, but costs of maintenance will have to come out of the general fund.
In addition, some studies have shown athletes are more likely to be injured on artificial turf, and others have questioned the environmental impact of the chemicals that are used in its manufacture.
The school board and administration need to ask questions about the state of our current fields, the current maintenance costs, and the proposed new system before making a decision. An excellent list of questions is here, starting at page 11:
http://www.redhenturf.com/pdfs/TheTruthAboutArtificialTurf.pdf
Some athletic boosters in the community are touting this project as being a terrific idea because they claim the new field will be used during PE class by every student in the high school, not just the athletes. They also say it's a definite must-do because the state will provide significant aid that will mean the district only needs to come up with $841K to make the $2.5M project happen.
However, this athletic proposal also includes $300K for new bleachers, $79K for a press box, and $33K for a new sound system, which will have to be paid for 100% by the district, with no state matching aid. And these items won't improve the district's delivery of PE classes - they will only benefit the students who participate in the athletic program. (Some parents have suggested the new complex will also benefit the marching band, but the high school doesn't even have a field band currently, nor would they be able to start one given the current underfunding of the band program.)
The whole reason to use the capital fund to do projects is to get the advantage of matching state aid. For projects like the bleachers and press box which are ineligible for state aid and not directly related to the schools' academic mission, alternative sources of funding, such as community and corporate sponsorship, should be considered before dipping into district funds.
Also - speaking of physical education and capital improvements - do we even know if every elementary school in the city has a functioning outdoor play area and playground equipment? When this issue was last discussed over the summer, the Board couldn't get the requisite four votes to add playgrounds to the facilities review checklist. I'm not talking about spending money on playgrounds here - just verifying what the current status of each school's playground is, so we can identify what, if anything, may need improvement. I know some schools (Montessori!) have excellent playgrounds that get regular use by kids at recess: if Board members are unwilling to even ask if other schools have outside space for kids to play, that's a huge equity issue they are intentionally ignoring.
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