Artificial turf won’t grow this year
Richard Farr, the president of the Jasper Football Booster Club, told the Jasper School Board the group would need more time to raise money for an artificial turf field at Jerry Brewer Alumni Stadium.
The booster club intended to seek about $800,000 in donations to pay for the switch from natural Bermuda grass to turf. With a deadline of the middle of April to get bids let for the new field and donations not being what they wanted at this point, the project has been extended until next year.
The fundraising will continue and the plans will continue to move forward for the artificial field.
The school board agreed with Superintendent Dr. Tracy Lorey that it’s not feasible to make it happen this year.
Farr reported that their plans were stalled because they don’t have significant donor with about $250,000 or so step up and make the project possible to be paid for this year.
He reports that his group has raised about $200,000 through donations from the major corporations in Jasper. Several donors added an additional $250,000 to be paid over the next two years.
Farr asked the board if some sort of loan could be arranged so that the project could be done this year. He suggested donations could be earmarked to pay back the loan. Board members indicated they were leery about the proposal without any guarantee donors would come forward to pay the debt.
Afterward the meeting Farr said, “we’re going to continue with our fundraising and drive that commitment level up with the dollars we have so far, which we expect this year to be over $400,000 in commitments and funds brought in. But we’ve got to go way beyond that obviously with a field that’s going to cost around $700,000 to $800,000.”
He said that waiting another year means that field utilization for the marching band and other teams is not viable since a grass surface is more susceptible to damage due to overuse.
“We run the risk of potentially losing a band contest if we’re not able to provide a field for them to perform on, ” said Farr.
After Farr’s presentation, Clerk of the Works Scott Stenftenagel reported that he has quotes for sprigging the existing field for $30,000.00. The board passed his request to have the grass field replaced for this year.
The board also took the following actions.
–Approved a request from Dr. Lorey to spend just over $242,000 from several vendors to upgrade the wireless infrastructure at both Jasper Middle and High School facilities to allow for a one-to-one computing environment so that each student can have a mobile computing device, connected to the Internet.
Lorey said that they school system has applied for state reimbursement that will cover a significant portion of the costs.
–Approved holding school on Good Friday, April 3rd, to make up for one of two snow days that the school corporation took in the last two weeks.
The second day will be made up on Tuesday, May 26th, the day after Memorial Day. Seniors will go to school on Saturday, April 4th to make up their day so that they won’t have to go to school after graduation day.
–Heard the school improvement plan presentation by Principal Brian Wilson of Jasper High School. The update included data on graduation rates at 96.9 percent and attendance rate of 97.4 percent. Wilson announced that their overall school improvement goal was to increase the students reading, writing and communications skills.
–Approved the summer school dates of June 1 through June 26, which would include credit recovery classes and iRead 3 remediation for those who did not pass the iRead 3 tests.
–Heard Scott Stenftenagel report that Alpha Mechanical will be onsite at Jasper High School to provide a monitoring system for the HVAC systems to find efficiencies to help lower energy costs at the school.
