QUESTION FAKE GRASS in LGUSD.

Plastic fields do not belong in LGUSD. No need to take our word for it. Go HERE to see what experts, government agencies, & organizations have to say. Many have communicated directly with LGUSD.

1700+ Los Gatos children currently get to passively and actively recreate on nature for two recess periods per schoolday on LGUSD's elementary schools play fields.  More than half these children may be about to lose this privilege . San Jose Water's latest Water Shortage Contingency Plan (a document titled "Schedule No. 14.1 Water Shortage Contingency Plan with Staged Mandatory Reductions and Drought Surcharges") has 5 stages of water conservation that include mandatory restrictions regarding water use. Failure to comply with the restrictions of a given stage is deemed a wasteful and unreasonable use of water. The 5 stages are: Conservation and outreach Water reduction needed Severe water reduction (<--- This is where Los Gatos is as of 12/5/21.) Critical water reduction Emergency water reduction Even at the highest stage of water conservation, "Emergency water reduction" (stage 5), when San Jose Water prohibits water or irrigation of lawn, landscap

Image from idiomsandslang.com . Are we confident that board members, teachers and administration, and community members explicitly advocating for use of plastic grass on our elementary school campuses  are  well-informed of its pros and cons?   Are we confident they've been presented with alternatives?   Have they been presented with attractive, inviting, low maintenance corridor and courtyard designs without plastic grass?  Have they been presented with  an overly simplistic approach to water conservation on the fields? ? Terese McNamee, Director of Maintenance and Operations Thomas Lettiere, and our landscape designer Devin Conway have all repeatedly stated publicly they have no stake in the game, that they are not advocating for plastic grass, and that they are simply providing options for the  the  decision-makers, the  LGUSD Board of Trustees .  Presumably stakeholders are relying on the LGUSD board and the district to have thoroughly researched the  options being presented to

Image from ehhi.org's  synthetic turf report . It is a misconception that LGUSD has  adequately addressed safety concerns by  proposing to use an artificial turf system with an alternative infill to recycled tire crumb.   CA Dept of Toxic Substances Control is not yet ready to conclude artificial turf is non-toxic even if consumers use a version without recycled tires in it. The department is currently working on an evaluation . The information below remains true for artificial turf installations both with and without recycled tire crumb infill. Safe Healthy Playing Fields, Inc. (SHPFI)  reports  "The fact is, no government agency has concluded artificial turf is safe - not the Environmental Protection Agency nor the Consumer Product Safety Comission .  Only the industry which gains financially from your use of these fields has paid consultants to conclude safety from very limited, inconclusive tests. There are no tests showing synturf is safe. There are only tests that canno

Image from  2021-2023 Priority Product Work Plan CA Dept of Toxic Substances Control is evaluating whether artificial turf should be classified as a product that needs to be labelled as toxic. The agency has added artificial turf to its 2021-2023 Priority Product Work Plan for research and study to determine whether it needs to be added as a Priority Product.   If the agency concludes artificial turf is a Priority Product, it will become a requirement for manufacturers to label the toxic chemicals in it so that consumers are aware.    The fact the product is under investigation indicates artificial turf may be lacking in adequate regulation. Below is the text regarding artificial turf that appears in the final plan. Note that the toxicity concerns are not limited to tire crumb rubber. CA Dept of Toxic Substances Control is not yet ready to conclude artificial turf is non-toxic even if consumers use a version without recycled tires in it. If our own state agency is not yet ready t

Image from businessinsider.com Think installing plastic grass constitutes doing your part to respond to climate change?  Think again.   Trace that messaging back to its source.  The source is NOT  Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD).  The source is most likely an entity that profits  when you buy an artificial turf system... probably someone in the petroleum industry, plastics  industry , chemical  industry  or artificial turf industry.   The companies polluting the planet have spent millions to make you think carpooling and recycling will save us . These companies have also spent millions to make you think installing plastic grass will save us. If you have fallen under the spell of those that make money when you buy plastic grass, it's time to wake up.  Plastic grass is NOT an environmentally-responsible way to deal with drought . Our water district, SCVWD, like other districts throughout the state: promotes water conservation does NOT promote artificial turf SCVWD explains

Image from student Ryan Basso's " The Balance of Opinion " LGUSD district management staff  continue to insist artificial turf is safe d espite assertions from experts and government agencies that it is  premature to conclude artificial turf is safe. LGUSD's conclusion of safety is based, seemingly entirely, on the word of the sole consultant they hired explicitly to provide safety reassurances, David Teter.   Why are district management staff: neglecting to seek out and consider the input of at least one of the  experts that finds it  premature to conclude artificial turf is safe? failing to acknowledge concerns that clearly continue to be held by government agencies?  failing to acknowledge the narrow context of Teter's product analysis? so willing to adopt Teter's advice knowing that not only was  he hired by the artificial turf industry to get  one of our state agencies  to dismiss its concerns, he actually  failed  to do so? LGUSD's consultant, Dav

Image from nasa.gov . With climate change, heat waves are becoming more frequent, more intense, and longer lasting. As humans replace natural ground cover and vegetation with artificial materials (like roofs, pavements, and synthetic turf), these surfaces significantly change how the land absorbs and releases energy. These surfaces contribute to the "urban heat island effect", the phenomenon where developed areas get hotter than nearby rural areas. Additional air conditioning is required to counter-balance the increased temperatures, thereby increasing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. This is a vicious cycle. As climate change pushes many cities towards dangerous temperatures, it's important we retain living landscapes to mitigate excessive heat. Even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency confirms that "elevated temperatures from heat islands can affect a community’s environment and quality of life in multiple ways: Compromise

Image from Mt. Sinai CEHC . The  Children’s Environmental Health Center of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai   strongly discourages artificial turf installations. While the letter below is addressed to another set of decision-makers in another community (yes, there are many communities across the country beseeching their electeds to take a pause before pulling this trigger), these points aren't specific to the community the letter is addressed to.

Posted with his permission, here is the message of an 11/9/21 letter to the LGUSD school board from a Daves Avenue parent... Dear Terese, Mrs. Mittleman, and all others concerned, Thank you for hosting the town hall session last night. I know a lot of work has gone into this by you and your team. Here are the thoughts I left the meeting with – first, 2 general notes about the process, and then 2 specific notes about the plans for Daves Avenue… [For those that don’t know me, I’m a designer (and licensed architect in 5 states) and a dad of 3 girls – one at Daves now and 2 more to follow in the years ahead.] General Notes Transparency - It would be great if the district’s designs could be posted at each of the schools for review by current parents, students, and even community members that may have future students. As is, the plans are hard to read and visualize (even for someone working in the architecture industry). Sadly, combining these issues with the lack of transparent communicatio

"Turn off the tap by shutting down the plastic machine", advises The Story of Stuff . Plastic comes from fossil fuels.   For sustainability and climate resilience purposes, we've been teaching our kids that we've got to reduce our use of fossil fuels. We've been teaching our kids we've got to stop using plastic in situations where we have reasonable alternatives. And our kids care... Daves and Lexington Elementary kids campaigned to get rid of plastic packaging and straws both in the district and with local officials . The Fisher kids were grand prize winners of an Eco Grant from Grades of Green in part for persuading the school to stop selling single-use water bottles . Van Meter kids attended an assembly with a representative of West Valley Collection & Recycling to learn more about how our waste stream is handled.  And for Earth Day, the Van Meter Green Team reviewed with the students that  "5 R's is the new 3 R's" :  Refuse, Reduce,

What started out like this in September 2018... was transformed by March 2020 into this... THIS. IS. An outdoor classroom. There is no mention in the presentation materials about Van Meter's Full STEAM Ahead Project. What's the plan for this courtyard space outside of Van Meter's STEAM lab?? Hopefully, what was there pre-Covid is being preserved or at the very least its spirit and benefits are preserved by intentionally reproducing them elsewhere on campus. While a Life Lab space is in the Van Meter design plans, I'm not sure it fully accomplishes the same thing all on its own. Background: Mrs. Hill was awarded a grant by CTA's Institute for Teaching and invested massive amounts of her personal time building out that courtyard into a beautiful and lively space for our kids featuring a garden, a nasturtium tipi, blueberry bushes, a cozy seating area with a whiteboard, wildflowers, a root viewing box, and more. And she had exciting plans to incoporate a mural

The downsides of using artificial turf outweigh the upsides. Image from aprilsmith.org . Below is a pared down list of downsides to using artificial turf, focused on concerns most relevant to areas of campus beyond the fields.  This includes spaces designed to be used as "outdoor classrooms" where it's envisioned the community's 5-11 year old students will gather, eat, and play during class time, recess, and lunch, such as outdoor corridors and courtyards, including a courtyard used daily by kindergarteners.   To review the downsides to using artificial turf on the play fields, see our original flyer . Question whether motives for installing artificial turf outweigh these compelling reasons to dismiss artificial turf, especially given that alternatives are within reach... HEAT - Artificial turf, even with plant-based infill, gets HOT.  For example, on a sunny, 80 degree day, it might be 110 degrees on artificial turf with cork infill.  Last schoolyear, we had 77 day