The Abridged version:
- Plans to renovate Crocker Riverside Elementary School’s playing field with artificial turf were met with intense backlash from parents on Thursday evening, questioning potential health and environmental effects. Families brought their concerns to the Sacramento City Unified School District school board meeting.
- One board member expressed his own reservations about the synthetic field. Others said they wanted to have more community discussion before proceeding with the project.
- A listening session is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Crocker Riverside.
In response to intense backlash from parents, leaders at Sacramento City Unified School District are decelerating plans for artificial turf at Crocker Riverside Elementary School.
The sweeping renovation of the Land Park school play area had been full steam ahead. Changes included new hard courts, playground equipment and a shade structure. The district facilities team also envisioned updating the school’s well-worn grass playing field with synthetic turf.
Many parents at the school say they learned only recently about that last change. The field overhaul was met with swift pushback.
“This is a choice made for the sake of convenience, rather than good judgment,” said Linda Mar, a Crocker Riverside parent. “Also, this is not a choice made by parents.”
Mar and a handful of parents brought their concerns to Thursday’s school board meeting, where leaders were receptive to their calls for delay.
The project is pending an informational meeting and listening session, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Crocker Riverside auditorium.
Board reacts to novel proposal
Trustee Taylor Kayatta backed the community concerns, saying he is not a fan of using artificial grass at elementary schools.
“I also understand that in some cases maybe it’s our only option,” he said. “But my default position at Crocker, for the whole district is that this should really be an absolute, absolute last resort.”
Eleven schools in Sacramento City Unified, six of them elementary schools, have faux grass on campus. That includes high schools like Hiram Johnson and McClatchy, where student athletes practice and compete on synthetic fields.
Yet, among elementary schools, Crocker Riverside would be the first of its kind in the district, according to Chris Ralston, assistant superintendent of facilities.
“At this scale,” Ralston said during Thursday’s meeting. “We don’t have a full scale of only artificial turf available (at) an elementary school.”
William Land Elementary School has had only synthetic grass for about a decade now, Ralston said. At the Southside Park campus, turf occupies about 10,000 square feet. At Crocker Riverside, the proposed fake field would take up about 45,000 square feet.
Heat and health concerns
Parents like Mar — whose online petition opposing the project had almost 500 signatures as of Thursday — have raised concerns about potential health impacts specifically for a younger student body.
Research on artificial turf is ongoing, with experts reaching mixed conclusions.
One of the top concerns, Sacramento pediatrician Dr. Beatrice Tetteh said, is heat.
“We’re in California. It gets hot,” she previously told Abridged. Surface temperatures on an artificial field often surpass that of the air above, according to Mount Sinai’s medical school in New York.
Plus, Tetteh said, harm from exposure to chemicals in the plastic grass is an open-ended question.
“Especially when there’s children involved, we have to look at the long term,” she said.”
Communication issues arose
Parents at Crocker Riverside have also taken issue with what they say was a lapse in communication.
Some said they felt have felt like district staff is trying to force the changes through, without giving community members the chance to weigh in.
“It was presented to parents as kind of take it or leave it,” Mar told Abridged.
Ralston, with the district’s facilities department, said his team held meetings with school administrators and the parent teacher organization since October.
“A project of this size generally doesn’t have much of a conversation,” Ralston said.
Tuesday’s meeting will include a question-and-answer portion for parents.
Savannah Kuchar is a reporter covering education. She came to Sacramento to be a part of the Abridged team and contribute to a crucial local news source.