Taos Schools moves to build new football field
Project would use $1.1M in federal pandemic relief funds
The Taos Municipal Schools District board of education met last Wednesday (May 11) and voted in favor of moving forward with the replacement of their 14-yearold football field and six-year-old track, a project that professional estimates indicate will cost at least $1.3 million.
After failing during the last legislative session to secure a $1.5-million capital outlay appropriation that would have been used to replace Anaya Field, the district appeared ready to settle on a less-expensive fix that would have cost around $400,000. But wheels were already in motion, tours of fields elsewhere were completed and the district gathered bids from three contractors.
After a lengthy presentation and discussion, the board of education voted unanimously to engage Hellas
Construction to complete the full replacement project, on which the district proposes to spend $1.1 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars, plus another $200,000 drawn from the school’s share of local gross receipts tax and school mill levy revenue.
The $1.3 million Hellas proposal, the lowest of the three bids — the highest was $2 million — is only an estimate. The district hasn’t, for example, done any geotechnical testing yet to determine what challenges may lie beneath the surface of the current field, the sand substrate of which would need to be leveled and replaced with “pea-sized gravel.” The board of education will consider the approval of project funding separately at a later date.
As proposed, the new field — with turf colors and design to be determined by the student body — would make the Taos Tigers the envy of high school sports teams far and wide. Taos currently has an adequate field compared to some school districts in the state, but with a promised GMAX impact rating of “100,” the new field would raise the safety bar significantly, Coach Art Abreu said.
“With this, you could have any one of your professional football teams come on out and they’’ll be able to practice,” Abreu said, noting that NFL teams would be forbidden from playing on the current Anaya Field, which has an impact rating below pro-football standards.
“Not one NFL team can touch a field that has a GMAX over 100,” he said. “It’s going to have that cushion, you know, so you’re not slapping your body on the floor.”
Assistant Superintendent Valerie Trujillo told board members that between 2015-2021, student athletes had suffered 19 concussions and 24 soft-tissue injuries.
“The consequence of not replacing both [the track and field] jeopardizes student safety,” she said.
As in the past several board meetings, board President Mark Flores advocated strongly and at length for the full replacement of the field.
“I support athletics in my sleep,” he said.
Board member Cynthia Spray, however, wasn’t certain that the school district was allowed to spend ARPA money on a football field. “I thought the ARPA was for students who were left behind,” she said. “Has the attorney weighed in?”
Trujillo indicated that she hadn’t consulted legal counsel, but asserted that other school districts in New Mexico are planning to spend some of their ARPA funds on sports fields.
“I was able to contact some of those superintendents and talk to them as how they were able to get that ARPA process through, and they were able to utilize it as an ‘outdoor learning space,’ which our coaches and our PE teachers and our other teachers would like to use that as well,” she said.
A spokesperson for the N.M. Public Education Department said it was unable to confirm whether American Rescue Plan Act dollars are being used by other districts to replace or repair sports fields and the person in charge of federal funding programs wasn’t available to comment on whether it was an approved use of the money.
Spray also asked if the school is “applying any ARPA money toward the students that fell so far behind in our district?”
Trujillo replied that the district is spending roughly $270,000 on English language arts and about the same amount on mathematics programs.
“Each of the schools have created a learning loss plan,” Trujillo said. “And so we plan on implementing that with the rest of the ARPA money, and the rest of the CARES Act money.”