Friday Night Lights

Advocates for the installation of lights at the turf field of Scarsdale High School attended the Scarsdale School Board meeting on Monday November 22. Rippy Philipps and Steve Nicholas represented the Scarsdale Youth Football League to ask for the Board’s prior approval for a private fundraising effort for the project.

The group would like to collect $300,000 to install lights at the field. The lights would allow for extended use of the field by Scarsdale High School and Middle School schools teams as well as club teams, including the Scarsdale Youth Soccer and Football teams. With a lit field, evening practices and games could be scheduled as they are now in the neighboring towns of Eastchester, White Plains and Ossining.

Philipps and Nicholas contend that lighting the field has many advantages. First, it would bring more students and parents to the field at night, thereby creating a sense of community. Teams who now have limited practice time due to wet fields and darkness would have additional playing time. Volunteer coaches, who cannot leave work before the sun goes down would be able to coach under the lights at night, thereby increasing volunteerism. In their view, lighting the field would help to combat drug and alcohol use by teens who could gather at the school and participate in or watch community games.

At face value, a gift of $300,000 for infrastructure improvements to the schools at a time when strapped budgets have prevented the athletics department from funding any major projects seemed beneficial. Coincidentally, the gift proposal came just weeks the League of Women Voters convened a panel of experts to explore the establishment of an educational foundation that would govern large gifts to the schools. Many of the issue discussed by that panel emerged in the conversation about the gift of lights on Monday night and resulted in more questions than answers.

Among these questions were both philosophical and practical concerns about the acceptance of the gift and installation of the lights, including:

• How would the gift affect the School Board’s role of making budget priority decisions?
• Is it desirable to use outside funds to support the schools?
• Would the need to study this issue interrupt the regular business of the Board and the budgeting process and strain the limited resources of the staff?
• Should this decision be considered on its merits or as part of a larger discussion about the establishment of a foundation?
• Would a gift of this size benefit the entire community?
• Would the group making the contribution exercise undue influence?
• Is the installation of lights a priority for the High School Athletics Department?

On a more practical level, the Board and Dr. McGill discussed the following:

• Would nighttime practices and games interrupt the academic program at school and family time?
• Would night games require extra supervisory, traffic and custodial staff on school grounds?
• Even if the Board agreed to a schedule for field use now, would there be pressure to increase hours of play in the future?
• What are the costs to maintain the lights, including electricity, bulbs and repairs and who would fund this?
• Would Fox Meadow residents who surround the field object to bright lights in their neighborhood and to increased evening traffic to the school?
• Looking at this project as a cost vs. benefit analysis, would the monies be spent for the maximum benefit? i.e. would a few additional hours of field time justify the cost?

Dr. McGill and Linda Purvis offered information about current priorities for the High School Athletic Department and apparently lights were not on the list. There is a need to renovate the fitness center and bring it up to code at an estimated cost of $200,000. The baseball diamond has drainage issues and needs to be graded and repositioned and McGill added that the turf field is in need of repairs.

In order to get more information, the Board decided to convene a study session to formulate a list of questions to be answered by advocates for the field concerning schedules for usage, estimated costs and revenues and the impact of lights on the school and the neighborhood.

At this point in the meeting, Dr. Nicholas again addressed the Board, asserting that the lights were for the” entire community” and that they would bring kids back to the school at night. He challenged the Board to “go out and speak to the community,” claiming that “this is what they (the community) wants and that the elected Board members were “losing perspective” on what they needed to provide.

Gail Leone a co-President of Maroon and White spoke in support of the lights and assured the Board that students with night practices would do their homework in the afternoon as they are “disciplined school athletes.” A Fox Meadow resident said “the lights would offer a layer of security of those who walk on the track at night, and that lights “would be great for the kids and the entire community.”

While the Board thanked the Association for their generosity, the discussion was an excellent illustration of how ad hoc funding initiatives can influence programs funded by the district and divert the Board from their regular business. It will be interesting to follow the process and see how it evolves. We will continue to track the discussion and report to you.