A field of their own: Small district hits pay dirt with outdoor field it couldn’t afford
The track and field at Anderson Valley Junior-Senior High School is nearly ready for its grand opening.
Credit: Courtesy of Anderson Valley Unified
The Anderson Valley Unified School District this month will cut the ribbon on a $4.7 million — beautiful and new — all-weather track for its junior-senior high school that most small school districts in California can only envy.
Anderson Valley, a 392-student district in Boonville, population 1,650, in Mendocino County, actually couldn’t afford it. But through a grant from an unlikely source, students will be sprinting around the state-of-the-art track enveloping a new grass soccer field.
The school board didn’t ask voters for it as part of the $13 million school construction bond that they passed three years ago. There were — and are — more pressing needs, like removing lead paint, repairing windows that wouldn’t prop open, replacing a broken pipe that leaked raw sewage onto school grounds, fixing dry rot, and modernizing the high school science lab. The bond so far has renovated seven classrooms that hadn’t been touched since the 1950s and the elementary school cafeteria.
“In other words, stretching dollars to update infrastructure in terrible shape,” said Superintendent Kristin Larson Balliet. Because of the state’s tax cap on raising taxes for school bonds, which hampers communities with low-assessed property values like Boonville, the district must spread out the bond drawdown over the years to complete the work.
Anderson Valley’s existing track was also in poor shape. Balliet described it as a “lumpy, dirt thing” surrounding a soccer field that the gophers had turned into a minefield for injuries. “Nobody should have to play on that,” she said.
And so Louise Simson, Balliet’s predecessor as superintendent until last year, discovered the California Department of Transportation’s Clean California Local Grant Program. The district’s project qualified as a community fitness opportunity for the community at large. Four out of 5 students are from first-generation, low-income families, many of whom tend the vineyards that Anderson Valley is known for.
“It was an amazing stroke of luck,” said Simson.
Along with providing “safe and equitable sporting events for high-poverty youth” at the school, it will be “most importantly a place for all residents to achieve their individual wellness and recreation goals, since there are no gyms or workout facilities within a 20-mile radius,” Caltrans wrote in the grant summary.
“The new track and field will transform the community, where adult soccer is king,” said Simson. “And it will be a huge equity factor for kids who visit schools like Mendocino High, where they see amazing facilities.”
Now, they will have a field of their own, said Balliet. “It will bring pride to the school; it will be important to the kids.”
Simson recently confided in a letter to her former staff that “every day before that grant was awarded, I prayed on that field because I truly believe that all kids deserve a shot.”
She has been invited back to her former school for the celebration on Nov. 21.
