Ranger Mom
06-01-2005, 09:48 AM
I saw this story on another site...and thought it was intersting reading. (I apologize if it's already been posted)!
DENTON - Looking six stories down from the VIP-ready "Texas Room" to a field made of the same brand of artificial turf on which the Dallas Cowboys play, Ken Purcell declares, "This is probably the best high school football stadium in the country. I'm not making any apologies."
Purcell, Denton Independent School District's athletics director, said he asked architects to incorporate aspects of state-of-the-art fields in Waco, Southlake and Mesquite, as well as the Cowboys' Texas Stadium, into Denton's $20.5 million football field, which opened in September.
Hence the separate locker rooms for each team's offensive and defensive squads; the three-story, $900,000 instant-replay scoreboard; the spacious two-level press box; and the glass wall separating the athletics staff offices, trophy hall and banquet room from the north end zone.
The 12,000-seat complex, which Denton voters approved by a 3-to-1 margin in a 2002 bond election, is one of 23 new or planned public school stadiums in the Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio metropolitan areas, according to a Houston Chronicle survey of the districts.
The combined price tag: $305.4 million.
Numbers such as those, coming at a time when school districts across the state are struggling with budgets to pay for teachers and books, have a handful of critics complaining of wildly misplaced priorities. In several districts, such as the Round Rock Independent School District north of Austin, stadium spending has prompted voter backlash.
But mostly, in a state where the best-funded high school football teams have 80-yard indoor practice facilities and sprawling weight rooms, the $13 million to $27 million stadium with all the trimmings has become almost commonplace, a concrete monument to hometown pride and the pre-eminence of Friday night football in Texas.
Districts that have built large stadiums in recent years justify them as revenue sources, as multipurpose facilities or simply as fittingly big venues for big, popular programs. They point out their districts, like most across the state, spend only a small percentage of their bond money on athletics facilities.
'A real attachment'
A little more than a year ago, Bob McSpadden, a Katy resident who operates a Web site celebrating all things Texan, began compiling and posting a list of the state's high school football venues. He asked readers of his TexasBob.com to send in photos, histories and statistics.
"It was crazy," McSpadden said. "People have a real attachment to these places. I was getting five or six e-mails a day just correcting things in the database that were wrong."
Texas led the nation in new building, said Tom Oehler, senior vice president of SHW Sports, a Dallas-based architectural firm that specializes in sports facilities.
"We just started our first job in Oklahoma," he said. In addition to stadiums, SHW has designed climate-controlled indoor practice fields — such as those used by major college programs and the pros — for four Texas high schools. The price: $3.5 million to $9 million.
Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights, a critical look at Odessa's obsession with its high school football team, calls the stadium boom an "epidemic" that further tilts schools toward football programs and away from those benefiting a wider array of students.
"It makes football bigger, and along with that comes a host of problems," said Bissinger, whose 1990 best-seller was made into a hit movie last year. "It adds to the sense that the football players are the haves. It gives them a false sense of entitlement. I saw this in Odessa."
Taxpayer dollars would be better spent reducing class size or encouraging physical fitness and reducing obesity throughout the student body, he said.
"I talk to educators, administrators and coaches all the time, and they tell me, 'Yes, sports is really careening out of control.' Then they build stadiums with skyboxes and instant replay. As if a high school needed instant replay," he said. "I'm glad to see my book has done no good at all."
Balance claimed
But Don Daniel, superintendent of the Aledo Independent School District west of Fort Worth, said, "If you're going to have these programs, you need facilities."
Aledo, a rapidly growing district, passed a bond program in February to build an 8,000-seat stadium — one of the more modest among those going up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
It was one of five stadiums voters across the state approved in 2004 and the first three months of 2005, according to records compiled by the Texas Bond Review Board. Voters in 108 districts passed more than $7 billion worth of bonds for construction of schools, classrooms and extracurricular facilities in that 15-month period, an analysis of the review board's figures shows. Less than 1 percent, about $65 million, was directed to building high school football stadiums.
Stadium backers say the statewide bond figures show school districts are balancing athletics with academic programs. The voter-approved venues replace worn-out facilities or are needed to keep up with growth, they say.
"I'm a salesman for athletics," said Denton's Purcell. "Athletics is a part of the education we're offering. We teach discipline, pride. In today's society, people complain it's hard to get anyone to make a decision. Playing in front of 14,000 people, you learn to make decisions.
"Football is as popular in Texas as basketball is in Indiana. We shouldn't shy away from that."
In financial terms, he said, Denton's stadium generates revenue from ticket sales and advertising on its scoreboard, as well as from being used as a rental venue for playoff games and soccer tournaments.
Advertising from a local car dealer and others brought in $47,600 in the stadium's first season, he said, adding that total revenue would not be calculated until the stadium is open a year.
'First-class facility'
In the Houston area, which has built fewer new stadiums than Dallas-Fort Worth, $82 million worth are planned or have opened in the last two years. The latest is in the 7,000-student Dickinson Independent School District, where voters approved $13 million last month for an 8,000-seat facility.
The Houston area's most elaborate stadium — with instant replay, cup holders on the seats and a room with space for 30 scouts — opened in 2002 in Galena Park Independent School District at a cost of $21 million.
"We are proud to be able to provide such a first-class facility. We put a lot of emphasis on our students," said Staci Stansfield, Galena Park's director of communications.
The stadium, which voters approved in 1999, has attracted a lot of notice from other districts, she said. "We've had numerous requests to provide information about it."
Round Rock Independent School District opened a $27 million stadium in 2003 that earns approximately $500,000 a year, including about $100,000 from advertising on its scoreboard, school officials said.
"We get frustrated by people talking about all this money we spent when we should be paying teachers more," said district spokeswoman Cathy Brandewie.
"You can't use bond money for operating expenses like salaries," she said. Bond money can be used only for new buildings and repairs.
"Like just about every other district in the state, we're collecting the maximum amount we can in our tax rate for salaries," she said.
"If we didn't use this money for a stadium, we couldn't have used it for salaries."
Voters approved the bond for the stadium in 2000 by more than 2-to-1, she said, and it has allowed the district's high schools to schedule all their games on Friday nights. Before, some had to play on Thursdays, she said.
Bond proposal defeated
In the years since the bond passed, Round Rock has been made to share some of its revenue under the state's so-called Robin Hood school financing system, which has made for tight budgets and some program cuts. As a result, district officials say, the stadium has become a "whipping boy" in a debate over spending.
"We needed another stadium but we didn't need $27 million worth of bells and whistles," said Elizabeth Elleson, who became a Round Rock school board member last year after running on a platform of "responsible spending."
Elleson said a small faction of athletes' parents lobbied hard for the stadium before it went before voters five years ago.
"Only 5,500 voters turned out. We're a district of 36,500 students," she said, "They didn't want anybody to turn out."
In March, after launching its campaign with a rally in front of the stadium, a taxpayers group easily defeated the district's latest bond proposal, which included no athletics facilities.
The issue this spring was not athletics. But the district's "gridiron cathedral" proved to be a handy symbol of misplaced priorities and extravagant spending, Elleson said. "A stadium this grand shows how far we're heading in the wrong direction."
DENTON - Looking six stories down from the VIP-ready "Texas Room" to a field made of the same brand of artificial turf on which the Dallas Cowboys play, Ken Purcell declares, "This is probably the best high school football stadium in the country. I'm not making any apologies."
Purcell, Denton Independent School District's athletics director, said he asked architects to incorporate aspects of state-of-the-art fields in Waco, Southlake and Mesquite, as well as the Cowboys' Texas Stadium, into Denton's $20.5 million football field, which opened in September.
Hence the separate locker rooms for each team's offensive and defensive squads; the three-story, $900,000 instant-replay scoreboard; the spacious two-level press box; and the glass wall separating the athletics staff offices, trophy hall and banquet room from the north end zone.
The 12,000-seat complex, which Denton voters approved by a 3-to-1 margin in a 2002 bond election, is one of 23 new or planned public school stadiums in the Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio metropolitan areas, according to a Houston Chronicle survey of the districts.
The combined price tag: $305.4 million.
Numbers such as those, coming at a time when school districts across the state are struggling with budgets to pay for teachers and books, have a handful of critics complaining of wildly misplaced priorities. In several districts, such as the Round Rock Independent School District north of Austin, stadium spending has prompted voter backlash.
But mostly, in a state where the best-funded high school football teams have 80-yard indoor practice facilities and sprawling weight rooms, the $13 million to $27 million stadium with all the trimmings has become almost commonplace, a concrete monument to hometown pride and the pre-eminence of Friday night football in Texas.
Districts that have built large stadiums in recent years justify them as revenue sources, as multipurpose facilities or simply as fittingly big venues for big, popular programs. They point out their districts, like most across the state, spend only a small percentage of their bond money on athletics facilities.
'A real attachment'
A little more than a year ago, Bob McSpadden, a Katy resident who operates a Web site celebrating all things Texan, began compiling and posting a list of the state's high school football venues. He asked readers of his TexasBob.com to send in photos, histories and statistics.
"It was crazy," McSpadden said. "People have a real attachment to these places. I was getting five or six e-mails a day just correcting things in the database that were wrong."
Texas led the nation in new building, said Tom Oehler, senior vice president of SHW Sports, a Dallas-based architectural firm that specializes in sports facilities.
"We just started our first job in Oklahoma," he said. In addition to stadiums, SHW has designed climate-controlled indoor practice fields — such as those used by major college programs and the pros — for four Texas high schools. The price: $3.5 million to $9 million.
Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights, a critical look at Odessa's obsession with its high school football team, calls the stadium boom an "epidemic" that further tilts schools toward football programs and away from those benefiting a wider array of students.
"It makes football bigger, and along with that comes a host of problems," said Bissinger, whose 1990 best-seller was made into a hit movie last year. "It adds to the sense that the football players are the haves. It gives them a false sense of entitlement. I saw this in Odessa."
Taxpayer dollars would be better spent reducing class size or encouraging physical fitness and reducing obesity throughout the student body, he said.
"I talk to educators, administrators and coaches all the time, and they tell me, 'Yes, sports is really careening out of control.' Then they build stadiums with skyboxes and instant replay. As if a high school needed instant replay," he said. "I'm glad to see my book has done no good at all."
Balance claimed
But Don Daniel, superintendent of the Aledo Independent School District west of Fort Worth, said, "If you're going to have these programs, you need facilities."
Aledo, a rapidly growing district, passed a bond program in February to build an 8,000-seat stadium — one of the more modest among those going up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
It was one of five stadiums voters across the state approved in 2004 and the first three months of 2005, according to records compiled by the Texas Bond Review Board. Voters in 108 districts passed more than $7 billion worth of bonds for construction of schools, classrooms and extracurricular facilities in that 15-month period, an analysis of the review board's figures shows. Less than 1 percent, about $65 million, was directed to building high school football stadiums.
Stadium backers say the statewide bond figures show school districts are balancing athletics with academic programs. The voter-approved venues replace worn-out facilities or are needed to keep up with growth, they say.
"I'm a salesman for athletics," said Denton's Purcell. "Athletics is a part of the education we're offering. We teach discipline, pride. In today's society, people complain it's hard to get anyone to make a decision. Playing in front of 14,000 people, you learn to make decisions.
"Football is as popular in Texas as basketball is in Indiana. We shouldn't shy away from that."
In financial terms, he said, Denton's stadium generates revenue from ticket sales and advertising on its scoreboard, as well as from being used as a rental venue for playoff games and soccer tournaments.
Advertising from a local car dealer and others brought in $47,600 in the stadium's first season, he said, adding that total revenue would not be calculated until the stadium is open a year.
'First-class facility'
In the Houston area, which has built fewer new stadiums than Dallas-Fort Worth, $82 million worth are planned or have opened in the last two years. The latest is in the 7,000-student Dickinson Independent School District, where voters approved $13 million last month for an 8,000-seat facility.
The Houston area's most elaborate stadium — with instant replay, cup holders on the seats and a room with space for 30 scouts — opened in 2002 in Galena Park Independent School District at a cost of $21 million.
"We are proud to be able to provide such a first-class facility. We put a lot of emphasis on our students," said Staci Stansfield, Galena Park's director of communications.
The stadium, which voters approved in 1999, has attracted a lot of notice from other districts, she said. "We've had numerous requests to provide information about it."
Round Rock Independent School District opened a $27 million stadium in 2003 that earns approximately $500,000 a year, including about $100,000 from advertising on its scoreboard, school officials said.
"We get frustrated by people talking about all this money we spent when we should be paying teachers more," said district spokeswoman Cathy Brandewie.
"You can't use bond money for operating expenses like salaries," she said. Bond money can be used only for new buildings and repairs.
"Like just about every other district in the state, we're collecting the maximum amount we can in our tax rate for salaries," she said.
"If we didn't use this money for a stadium, we couldn't have used it for salaries."
Voters approved the bond for the stadium in 2000 by more than 2-to-1, she said, and it has allowed the district's high schools to schedule all their games on Friday nights. Before, some had to play on Thursdays, she said.
Bond proposal defeated
In the years since the bond passed, Round Rock has been made to share some of its revenue under the state's so-called Robin Hood school financing system, which has made for tight budgets and some program cuts. As a result, district officials say, the stadium has become a "whipping boy" in a debate over spending.
"We needed another stadium but we didn't need $27 million worth of bells and whistles," said Elizabeth Elleson, who became a Round Rock school board member last year after running on a platform of "responsible spending."
Elleson said a small faction of athletes' parents lobbied hard for the stadium before it went before voters five years ago.
"Only 5,500 voters turned out. We're a district of 36,500 students," she said, "They didn't want anybody to turn out."
In March, after launching its campaign with a rally in front of the stadium, a taxpayers group easily defeated the district's latest bond proposal, which included no athletics facilities.
The issue this spring was not athletics. But the district's "gridiron cathedral" proved to be a handy symbol of misplaced priorities and extravagant spending, Elleson said. "A stadium this grand shows how far we're heading in the wrong direction."