<body><div><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3HpPGr_0sSHk1kC00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3HpPGr_0sSHk1kC00" width="1024" height="683" >HUNTSVILLE | In a Monday night appearance on the IH Sports Network’s The Round Table, Scott County Director of Schools Bill Hall said that work will begin on Scott High School’s new football field in mid May, with a targeted date of completion of Sept. 6.“The first scoop of dirt is supposed to come out directly after graduation,” Hall said. “Once graduation is complete, the project will be started. The project is scheduled to be complete on Sept. 6. That’s the date they gave me.”Scott High will play its first three road games of 2024 on the road. The first home game is scheduled for Sept. 13.“There will be a little bit of a time crunch,” Hall said.The Highlanders are using a firm out of Georgia that does most high school turf fields in the Peach State, as well as in East Tennessee. The same firm is currently installing synthetic turfs for the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals, Carolina Panthers and Seattle Seahawks. Hall said the turf concept selected by SHS is the best of the best.“This is top of the line,” he said. “There are three grades and this is the top. It’s the safest.”Hall also shared details about the look of the new field. It will be slightly lower and slightly south of the existing field, with turf that goes all the way to the bleachers on either side and new sidewalks beyond the end zones. The expanded surface area will help allow for a regulation-sized soccer pitch to overlay the football field. The old-school rifleman logo will replace the school’s current coonskin cap logo and will appear at midfield, with red end zones that feature the word “Highlanders” and “Scott” imprinted along the boxes on each sideline.“We think we have a beautiful product,” Hall said. “We think it is a good design, that it’s going to be a beautiful facility, and that it’s something everyone will be proud of.”Hall disclosed that the Scott County Storm youth-league program will likely be invited to use the field for its Saturday home games.“When we discussed all of this, that was part of the project,” he said. “We want this to be a community-oriented field. We want it to be utilized. We want it to be taken care of, of course, but we want it to benefit all. We’re going to open it up to our middle schools to play. We want that field to touch Scott County students and for them to be able to utilize it.”The Scott County Board of Education voted on Thursday to authorize $1.3 million for the turf project. Hall joined the IHSN to address several concerns that had been raised by members of the community since that vote.Hall said discussions about a turf field first began four years ago. He reached out to the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, and also had county attorney John Beaty draft a letter to the Haslam family’s Pilot Flying J brand, which sponsored turf fields for every high school in the Knox County School System several years ago.“We got nowhere,” Hall said. “We knew if this was going to get better we had to do it.”The original estimate for the turf project was $750,000. That could not happen because of other priorities — including new roofs for several schools, including Scott High, and a new gymnasium at Fairview School.Now, though, Hall said the time is right.“I wanted to wait until I felt like we were at a point where we could do both (the field at Scott High and a playroom at Huntsville Elementary),” he said. “I feel comfortable right now that we can do both projects. And we are committed to do both projects.”The projects will be funded from the school system’s reserves, he said.“We’re not asking anything from the county to do this,” he said. “We’re not asking the taxpayers to fund any of this and we’re not asking to raise taxes.”Hall said there’s currently $4.5 million in the school system’s reserve fund. The state mandates that each school system keep at least 3% of its operating budget in a reserve fund. For Scott County, that number is closer to 20% of the annual budget, he said.A new field was necessitated by the drainage problem that has created increasing issues and safety concerns. Hall told of painting the field for a football game after a 14-day rain drought, and water seeping between his toes as he worked.“The drainage system at our school, we’ve put thousands (of dollars) into it trying to fix it,” he said. “Either on the field, off the field, or behind the field, it’s not working. So we decided now is the time to bring the people in who can fix it and get it taken care of.”Fixing the field’s drainage problem would have costed hundreds of thousands of dollars even if Scott High hadn’t decided to go with synthetic turf. Hall said he has been told that Claiborne County just spent $700,000 renovating its field.“That’s what I was told today,” he said. “Whether that’s factual or not, I don’t know. (But) they put down grass, a sprinkler system, and excavation system and the whole works came in at $700,000.”Scott High has resodded its field twice. Fixing it now would have required a complete new sod, which Hall said would’ve costed between $200,000 and $300,000, not counting any kind of excavation work.Much of the community’s criticism of the school board’s decision centered on several factors: the field taking priority over a new playroom at Huntsville Elementary, the perception that school improvement needs are being ignored while the new field is built, and the perception that Hall pushed the new field to benefit his son, who is the head coach at Scott High.Hall pushed back against all three. He said repeatedly that he and the school board are “committed” to a new playroom at Huntsville Elementary. The architectural firm in charge of that project, Upland Design Group, is expected to present preliminary designs at a school board work shop on April 30. After that, Hall said, the committee tasked with the project can decide how to proceed, and the project can go to bid.“We realize that Huntsville’s playroom has been in use since the ‘80s. It’s time,” he said.As for neglecting needs elsewhere, Hall pointed out a laundry list of improvements that have been made, and came armed with a spreadsheet of expenses associated with those improvements.“We’ve made vast improvements, believe me,” he said. “When I first came into this job, Ryan Keeton was the budget director and I sat down with him. We did a five-year project of some things we wanted to do. One of the things was a new school for Scott High School. At that time we estimated that school at $11 million. Along with that were any upgrades in the buildings that we wanted to do. We’ve done those things. Are there things we still want to do? Absolutely. But as far as inside the walls of those schools, we’re in pretty good shape.”Several concerns listed publicly by local residents included leaking roofs at Scott High, outdated seating in the Little Theater, potential asbestos in older schools, and security concerns.One by one, Hall addressed each of those, saying that all of Scott High has been reroofed in the past couple of years, new seats and carpeting were just installed in the Little Theater, asbestos has been taken out of hallways in buildings, and upgrades have been made at other schools, as well — including a new roof at Robbins and the new gymnasium at Fairview.As for using the reserve funding to improve salaries or do other things, Hall said that’s not an option because salaries are a recurring expense.However, he pointed out that the salary for a starting teacher in Scott County last year was $500 over the state-mandated minimum of $42,000 — the first time in the school system’s history that it has been in a position to offer more than the state minimum.Hall said that the school will hope to get 15 to 20 years out of the turf field before having to replace it.“What they tell us is in 12 to 15 years you may have to go in and repaint it,” he said. “If you have to returf the whole thing you might be looking at $100,000.”</div></body>

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Work set to begin on Scott High field in mid May

HUNTSVILLE | In a Monday night appearance on the IH Sports Network’s The Round Table, Scott County Director of Schools Bill Hall said that work will begin on Scott High School’s new football field in mid May, with a targeted date of completion of Sept. 6. “The first...

Work set to begin on Scott High field in mid May

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