School Board votes to spend at least $2 million to add turf athletic field at new high school

The new 282,000 square foot Richmond High School for the Arts is expected to open by the end of this year, but one area of the campus has become a major source of debate.

Since the beginning of the year, Richmond Public Schools administrators and the School Board have debated whether to install a grass or artificial turf field for the school’s sports teams. The division’s original plan was to install a grass field at the school. Cost projections called for $125,000 in initial installation costs and a yearly maintenance cost of up to $45,000.

But members of the school’s planning committee gave feedback and asked the division to consider turf instead, as Huguenot High School and neighboring counties have. Turf's durability allows for more usage of the field, and proponents note turf is less likely to cause severe injuries than a poorly-maintained grass field.

A turf field costs between $2 million and $2.5 million to install, and about $10,000 -$20,000 in annual maintenance work. The field would also need to be replaced every 12 years, costing an additional $500,000 each time.

At Tuesday night's Board meeting, members voted 6-2 to install the pricier artificial turf. They said the money will come from the division’s current tranche of $200 million it received for school construction in 2024.

A survey conducted by the division helped inform the Board’s decision, as 57% of the 724 respondents were in favor of a turf field.

Kamras recommended following the results from the survey, adding that the RHSA community “would feel disrespected if they did not get what they were expecting.”

“I do think that this is a community that has not gotten everything that they have desired for a long, long time,” he said.

On the other hand, members voting no – Matt Percival (1st District) and Ali Faruk (3rd District) – insisted that while the funds come from school construction money, more pressing maintenance and building issues across the division exist. Since the issue was first raised to the Board earlier this year, Percival maintained his opposition and pointed to other schools in need of repairs or upgrades like lights on fields. 

“Last year we removed $126,000 worth of books from libraries, this year we were contemplating removing summer school from the budget,” he said. “We’re not talking about removing a football field. We’re talking about adding turf to a perfectly good football field, that has lights, that has a stadium. Not all of our high schools have lights.”

He added that voting for the item will also shift the burden into the division’s capital improvement budget when upgrades happen, saying that the Board is “basically buying this on credit.”

The survey, he continued, is like asking if students would “like an Xbox instead of your Chromebook.”

Faruk, unlike Percival, was prepared to vote yes to the turf, until he said he received multiple emails from constituents listing their own needed school building repairs and issues. 

Emmett Jafari (8th District) and Stephanie Rizzi (5th District) shared concerns about environmental and health concerns, like student exposure to “toxins” and “chemicals” used to create the turf, but ultimately concluded that the wishes of the community override their personal thoughts. 

Anne Holton (6th District) also supported turf, sharing that she would be concerned about potential legal ramifications if students did injure themselves on the grass, which Chief Operating Officer Patrick Herrel said is more likely to happen compared to on turf.

District owes contractor $270,000 for delaying construction

Meanwhile, the Board has accrued another fee, this one unexpected. 

The Board unanimously agreed Tuesday to pay $270,000 to RHSA project contractors S.B. Ballard for failing to move an “oversized dirt stockpile” on school grounds, which impacted contractors’ construction workflow and created additional work.

The actual amount of the delay fees are “northwards of $1 million,” Herrel said, recommending that the division agree to pay the amount. The incident occurred in 2024, when Dana Fox was overseeing all school facilities and construction. 

Board Chair Shavonda Fernandez (9th District) was vocally unhappy with the additional fee and told Herrel that measures need to be in place to ensure that it never happens again, while understanding that the incident predated his arrival to the division.

“I think it’s absolutely unacceptable for this type of oversight to have happened when we are struggling between keeping summer school open and eliminating positions,” she said. “This $270,000 could have gone a long way.”

Contact Reporter Victoria A. Ifatusin at vifatusin@richmonder.org