Jessica Cejnar Andrews / Monday, April 22 @ 2:53 p.m.
Smith River Students Press On With Field Renovation Project After DNUSD Trustees Deny $20,000-50,000 Funding Request
Smith River School's student governments presented a proposal to renovate their athletic field that's riddled with gopher holes and gopher mounds. | Courtesy Smith River School student government
Previously:
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Students spearheading a project to renovate Smith River School’s athletic field held a “symbolic groundbreaking” on Friday after community members donated more than 100 bags of mulch.
Celebrating with cake and lemonade, the donations came about 48 hours after the request went out via Facebook, said Marcus Endert, a special education teacher and student government advisor.
But, while the community is rallying— Endert says the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation Tribal Council pledged its support following an April 11 presentation — the students’ efforts to get funding from Del Norte Unified School District weren’t as successful.
“They had already given us their blessing to move forward,” Endert told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Saturday. “But then they went back and asked if we had consulted an engineer, if there would be drainage issues [and] environmental impacts to rototill, level and improve a field with gopher wire to abate gophers, which the district already claims they do on their website.”
Nearly a month after their first presentation, Smith River School’s student government asked the Board of Trustees to commit a minimum of $20,000 up to $50,000 toward the field renovation project. Over the last three years, 14.8 percent of injuries on the athletic field were attributed to gopher holes and gopher mounds, according to the students’ presentation.
Students also urged the Board of Trustees to help fix the field as it “creates positive news in the community heading into a bond measure.”
Endert said his students weren’t seeking general obligation bond money for the project, but offered to be the public face for efforts to get voters to approve it.
“We said, ‘You can say — or we can say — our district cares so much about our students and their safety that when students came to us we responded to their concerns. And if you vote for our bond measure in November, we promise to give all our sites the care and attention they deserve,’” Endert told the Outpost of his students’ April 11 appearance before the Board. “But we were told not yet, but in a way that was a shot down.”
In March, trustees praised the students' initiative, which included raising $4,000 in donations for the renovation project. But though they continued to commend them on April 11, trustees denied their funding request.
Board President Charlaine Mazzei said she and her colleagues directed the district’s engineer and architects to help with technical planning for the field renovation to make sure “everything is done according to best practices.”
Mazzei and her colleagues also urged Endert and his students to return to them with firm commitments from the partners they named, including True North Organizing Network, the Klamath Promise Neighborhood Grant and local agricultural producers including United Lily Growers, Dahlstrom and Watt and Palmer Westbrook.
“So far it’s just, ‘We think we can get this,’ or, ‘These folks have said they would help us,’ but there’s no real firm commitment in writing,” Mazzei told the Outpost.
Mazzei said she was also concerned that if the Board of Trustees commits up to $50,000 to renovate Smith River School’s field, would it be able to do the same for the other schools in the district.
“We have to look at equity for all schools and every school in the district has the same issues Smith River does,” she said. “They have crumbling infrastructure, gopher holes in their soccer fields, playground equipment that needs to be replaced. If we give [Smith River] a chunk of money, can we afford to give all the schools that same chunk?”
It’s up to the Board of Trustees to approve any project, volunteer or otherwise, on school grounds, Jeff Napier, DNUSD’s assistant superintendent of business, said. But a pledge of public dollars toward a volunteer project turns it into a public works project.
“You can have volunteers on public works projects, that’s legal, but a volunteer can’t be paid for any part of the project,” he said. “With public works comes having to pay prevailing wages and all the reporting. You have to use [Department of Industrial Relations] registered contractors and go through a bid projects and there are thresholds on what kind of a bid process you have to do.”
There’s still more planning that needs to be done for the Smith River field renovation project, Napier said. This includes conducting engineering and topographical studies to ensure water doesn’t pond in places, he said.
Even if volunteers are able to spearhead the project, Napier pointed out that it would be up to district maintenance to take care of future repairs.
According to Endert, at the Board’s April 11 meeting Superintendent Jeff Harris advised him and his students to meet with Napier, DNUSD’s director of maintenance Josh McCubbin and their engineer.
Endert said he would ask them for the waivers of liabilities, certifications, etc. for volunteers to sign.
“I refuse for us to be delayed by paperwork not being delivered,” he told the Outpost. “Then all of us [including] community partners will meet, that paperwork will be distributed, questions will be discussed and answered.”
When volunteers have completed the necessary paperwork for the district, Endert said he and his students would ask their partners to write separate letters on their own letterheads stating the value of their donations including the use of any equipment. They are also in the process of writing grants to the Wild Rivers Community Foundation and Alexandre Family Farm.
“We just got the endorsement of the Del Norte County Farm Bureau, which includes Alexandre Dairy, Crockett Lily, Dahlstrom Watt and Palmer Westbrook,” he said. “The Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation is in our corner. The Klamath Promise initiative and True North support us as well.”
Mazzei pointed out that gopher-ridden athletic fields aren't unique to Smith River School, which is why she and her colleagues seek to place a general obligations bond measure in front of Del Norte voters in November.
Just before hearing from Smith River students on April 11, Mazzei said began discussing what that measure would look like and how those bond dollars, if approved, could be used.
“We need to be addressing the infrastructure, which includes fields and includes areas where kids have PE or play, not just the buildings,” she said. “They’re trying to do this on their own, but in order to address the problem districtwide we’re going to need more resources than what we can generate without a bond.”
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