BRATTLEBORO — A five-month opposition campaign by Windham County residents in and around this first town in the state to ban single-use plastic shopping bags has spurred Brattleboro Union High School leaders to hit the brakes on plans to replace their football field with a $1 million synthetic surface.
“Not putting down plastic here isn’t going to stop climate change,” Brattleboro student Django Grace, who led several hundred peers in a town Climate Strike this fall, told a standing-room-only Windham Southeast School District Board meeting Wednesday. “But I think I put my future over having a field.”
The board, facing a seemingly insurmountable division between plan supporters and skeptics, voted to shift direction and approve an independent review and long-term feasibility study of the district’s current fields.
“It’s to look at what we have and find out what we can do,” member David Schoales said. “We should start looking at other ways to solve the problems that have been identified.”
School officials announced a plan just before summer vacation to swap grass planted in 1965 for artificial turf. Citing increasing problems growing seed and the desire for a more durable place to practice and play a variety of sports, they said they’ve considered such an upgrade since 2002.
But the request took many residents by surprise. They noted the first and only opportunity most locals had to learn about the proposal was a newspaper story published two days prior to the school’s last district meeting before a new state Act 46-mandated board took over governance.
Only 67 of the old district’s nearly 15,000 registered voters attended the June 12 meeting that approved a loan of up to $750,000 for “necessary capital improvements to the recreational field” — a motion that didn’t specify an artificial surface but one that synthetic turf supporters believed implied their choice.
Many residents of Brattleboro and the surrounding union high school towns of Dummerston, Guilford and Putney didn’t start to comprehend and challenge the action until a bigger crowd of 200 attended the first meeting under the new Act 46-mandated board two weeks later.
Since that time, as synthetic field supporters tried to push their plan forward, skeptics have attended meeting after meeting to promote alternatives, be it reseeding the current field or buying nearby farmland to add more practice space.
At the latest session Wednesday night, the board said it could reaffirm its support for a synthetic surface, consider a study of all options or call for a public vote.
The capacity crowd voiced a range of opinions. One mother noted the region’s history of environmental activism.
“I feel like it’s a slap in the face of this community,” she said of artificial turf.
In contrast, Brattleboro Union High School senior Gus Williams, captain of the boys’ soccer and lacrosse teams, spoke in favor of the plan, which supporters say will allow a field now dedicated to football to also host boys’ and girls’ soccer, lacrosse and field hockey.
“It’s kind of a slap in the face to those kids and those teams,” he said of calls to pull the proposal.
One father and coach asked why opponents haven’t questioned other school spending.
“Are we being a little disingenuous? Where’s the outrage over the roof improvements and the flooring? Has anybody brought any other environmental concerns with any other capital expenditure other than the synthetic field?”
That said, six of the seven board members in attendance voted for the field review and feasibility study, drawing approval from many in the audience.
“I think the public would like to know the information on both an artificial and a natural field — the pros and cons of each,” Dummerston resident Paul Normandeau said. “If you’re talking about spending that kind of money, you want to make the right decision.”
