When football is everything to a farming community such as Hicksville, what's a little bit of money? Aparently not much, as our Superintendent of Hicksville ISD has spent half a million dollars or more to replace the grass on the football field at Hicksville High with astroturf. Not only is he replacing HVHS's football field, but he is also replacing the football field of the OTHER high school on the other side of the school district, Lowtown High.
This issue is a major concern for many reasons. For one, at both football fields, an entirely new sprinkler system had just been installed the previous semester in order for the football players to be working on a field that hadn't been torn up during the season. Now the astroturf is going in, and that requires tearing up the brand new sprinkler systems to lay it down. What's more, this must all be done over the summer. And from the pictures that are now up on the Tour of Hicksville High section of this web site, you can see that construction in this school district takes an immense amount of time. Having our football fields torn up may in fact leave the football players without a place to play or practice throughout the early season of the 2003-2004 school year. Once the astroturf is installed, it is only good for a few years at a time. After that, it must then be replaced. How can our school district (our very sadly underpaid school district) afford to replace the astroturf after only a few years?
That is yet another major concern. How can we afford to keep it maintained, and how were we able to afford it in the first place? A couple of answers have been found to these questions. One answer stated that bond money was used to purchase the astroturf. If this was the case, then what the Superintendent had done was completely out of line. Much of that bond money was supposed to go towards other departments in the district, and using that bond money towards the footbal fields makes things seem as though football is the only concern of our district, leaving no room for growth in any other areas. Another explanation for payment of the fields was that funding was supplied by the HV High School Football and Band Booster clubs. This upset many parents because the majority of booster club members are parents. They all worked hard to raise the money by selling T-shirts, painting faces, and selling concession. To have not been told where he money was going first was an outrage and many parents would not have supported the funding if they had been notified. Many band booster parents were distressed because of the fact that the money was supposed to go towards supporting the band themselves, not the field that they occasionally march on for only a couple of months out of the year.
Hicksville will now have to wait and see what the outcome is to this outrageous Football Field scandal. One thing we can all agree on, the Superintendent has jumped himself into hot water this time.
