District goes to bat to level playing fields

Deepa Bharath

The school district is moving at full speed to make sure sports

fields at the two high schools are safe for athletes, school

officials said on Monday.

The move to set things right came after Mark Gleason, an Estancia

High School parent, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of

Education Office of Civil Rights on Sept. 13. In it, he said the

Newport-Mesa Unified School District is discriminating against Costa

Mesa’s schools with predominantly Latino populations and working to

satisfy Newport Beach schools, which are predominantly white.

School district officials sat down and talked about coming up with

a plan to improve communication between the schools and the district

with regard to field maintenance, said Jaime Castellanos, assistant

superintendent for secondary education.

“We want to take care of the field issues before they get to be a

problem and before the community starts noticing those conditions,”

he said.

He saw a number of cosmetic issues when he walked the fields with

the school principals last week, but he also saw safety issues,

Castellanos said.

“Whether it’s a broken fence or a pothole or a sprinkler, we want

to get to it right away,” he said. “It’s mostly about enhancing our

internal communications and [making] someone accountable for it.”

Some of the safety issues, such as a broken fiberglass bench at

Costa Mesa High School, have been fixed already, Castellanos said.

“But there are a few other things that need to be fixed, and we

are aiming to get the process going by the end of this week,” he

said.

Dan Oliver, another Estancia parent, who posted photos on

https://www.estanciabaseball.org, comparing Costa Mesa’s dilapidated

fields with Newport Beach’s lush ones, said he saw the district react

positively on Monday.

“The district finally wants to listen to what we have to say,” he

said. “If they actually listen to us -- fix the fields and commit to

maintain it that way -- there’s no reason for that complaint to

exist.”

Oliver said he posted the photos on the website so people could

see that the same school district is using different standards for

the two cities.

“If the [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] came in

and inspected the Costa Mesa fields, they would red-tag the place,”

he said.

Gleason’s complaint says there is no question that well-heeled

parents in Newport Beach can provide their children with fancy

scoreboards and all-weather tracks.

The complaint states: “But the facilities in question here

represent the fundamental basics that [the school district] is

obligated to provide equally for all students in the district

regardless of their ability to pay, safe soccer fields with grass,

softball fields that meet CIF standards, long jump landing areas

without metal sprinkler boxes in them, running tracks without

potholes and baseball fields without broken dangerous backstops.”

At the core of the issue is a joint-use agreement that the city of

Costa Mesa has with the school district governing the use and

maintenance of athletic fields. The charges leveled by Gleason are

the latest twist in a months-long debate about the agreement. The

city of Costa Mesa maintains and monitors use of the school

district’s fields, according to that agreement.

Newport Beach has had a joint-use agreement with the school

district for at least 20 years, but that agreement is simpler and

does not encompass the high schools, said Andrea McGuire, the city’s

recreation superintendent.

“It’s been in place for decades,” she said. “But that agreement

simply states that the city would maintain its fields and the school

district would maintain its fields.”

Also, the city of Newport Beach does not issue permits for fields

owned and operated by the school district, she said.

Castellanos said the difference in the agreement stemmed from the

high demand for fields in Costa Mesa.

The dialogue that the school district has started with the schools

and parents must be an ongoing one, Oliver said.

“These are not issues that can be fixed in one week or two weeks,”

he said. “It’s going to take some work.”

* DEEPA BHARATH is the enterprise and general assignment reporter.

She may be reached at (949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at

deepa.bharath@latimes.com.