Lincoln High School alumni and parents wanted a synthetic turf field. LAUSD has other plans

On Saturday, March 9, more than 60 people protested and rallied outside of the Abraham Lincoln High School (LHS), located in East Los Angeles, with signs containing phrases such as “No Honor!” “Give us our $$$ back,” “Promise Brokers,” “Don’t cheat our kids,” and “Si se puede!”

For two hours, the crowd, consisting of community members, Lincoln High School alumni and current students, gathered to bring awareness to what they call a “David vs. Goliath struggle” with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

Community leaders, along with the Kenny Washington Stadium Foundation (KWSF), a volunteer-based organization made up of former LHS athletes, say they secured $2 million in funding from the City of Los Angeles, which LAUSD initially promised to match, for a synthetic turf athletic field. But now KWSF representatives say the school district won't fund it, leaving students with a dangerous hole-filled playing surface.

Today the school is undergoing a $227 million “Comprehensive Modernization Project,” which, according to LAUSD, will address the most critical physical conditions and essential safety issues at the school site by modernizing, reconfiguring and/or replacing existing buildings, constructing new buildings, and upgrading deteriorated and outdated school site infrastructure. 

According to LAUSD, $25 million of the $277 million projected will be invested in athletics for things such as a new field restroom building, tennis court improvements, upgraded locker rooms and a list of other items. 

LAUSD official records show that the district’s acceptance of $2 million is for exclusive use to provide capital improvements to the athletic field, including upgrading the former natural grass field with a new natural grass one, which is not what KWSF helped allocate money for. 

Stephen Sariñana-Lampson, president of KWSF, told CALÓ News that the need for synthetic turf is not based on preference or looks but on safety. “Coyotes come down during the evening hours and leave their prey or poop on the field. LHS also has an issue with rodents, which leave numerous holes that have resulted in numerous injuries, not only to our players but to players from other schools. Lastly, we have erosion issues and water buildup on the field, which leads to [having] lots of mosquitoes.”

Sariñana-Lampson said that in 2018, when the school's modernization budget was $163 million, LAUSD said they didn't have the money for the synthetic field. “They said the funding they had at the time would not be enough for a synthetic field and they told us that if we wanted that field we would have to get it on our own, so we did,” Sariñana-Lampson said. 

The Kenny Washington Stadium Foundation, alumni, and current students met with former Councilmember Gil Cedillo to help allocate funding for the field. 

Before the meeting with Cedillo, KWSF had consulted FieldTurf and received a $1.8 million estimate for the construction and installation of an artificial surface football field and a rubberized track at LHS. “It took us about a year and we finally had a chance to get together with the council member and we indicated the challenge; we had told him we needed about $2 million for the field.”

 In 2021, the City Council announced the allocation of $2 million for the athletic field at LHS, one of the beneficiaries of the money that was shifted away from the Los Angeles Police Department in that year. "Anyone that has ever been to or played on that field knows that some work needs to be done," said Cedillo in 2021. “The Lincoln Heights community has been advocating for a new field. LAUSD has a master plan for Lincoln High School using bond funding but is unable to do any improvements to the athletic field to allow safe, quality football games."

 At a Kenny Washington Memorial Game X at LHS in October 2021, the KWSF publicly accepted $2 million from the City of Los Angeles for the renovation of the field. 

“On that same day, just moments later, this sum was concurrently matched by the Office of LAUSD School Board Member Monica Garcia, bringing our total funding to $4 million for the project. We were stoked,” Sariñana-Lampso said. “The $2 million in matching funds by the district is currently unaccounted for after initially being denied by LAUSD officials.” 

Today, KWSF and community members say LAUSD is not respecting the original intent of the city’s funding as spearheaded by Cedillo and instead accepting the $2 million in funds from the city (in November 2022), adding it to the overall $277 million renovation budget for the current modernization of LHS. 

“When we went out in good faith and got money that the school district told us we had to get and now LAUSD basically took those $2 million and they made a laundry list of stuff that, quite frankly, they should be responsible for, because they're responsible for that at every other high school in the district,“ Sariñana-Lampson said. “They blew our money.”

The “laundry list” that Sariñana-Lampson refers to are the additional items, apart from the natural grass field, that LAUSD is already building using the $2 million from the City of Los Angeles, including a new scoreboard with school branding, new football goal posts, a new public address system, speakers and water fountains with bottle filling tap dispensers; all of which are anticipated to be completed by the summer. 

“Of Los Angeles Unified’s $277 million in facilities investments to modernize Abraham Lincoln High School, $27 million has been allocated to athletic facilities, of which $2 million came from the City of Los Angeles. There are no additional matching funds,” an LAUSD spokesperson told CALÒ News via email.

 Since 2022, KWSF says they have been receiving the “round around” from the school district. The alumni organization says LAUSD claims that synthetic turf installation costs between $10-$15 million with a lead time of 2-3 year requirement for pre-planning before installation. 

KWSF continues to hope they can work with LAUSD and the city to hopefully bring the field the community wants and allocated money for.  

“This treatment and runaround from LAUSD doesn't happen to other schools on the West or North side, but why is that OK for Lincoln High School?” Sariñana-Lampson said.