LTUSD not in agreement regarding equality of ball fields

By Kathryn Reed

Lake Tahoe Unified School District is going to come up with a list of priorities for the ball fields it owns to give the committee recommending how to spend $500,000 of taxpayer money.

The district owns all the fields where children and adults play softball-baseball-soccer on the California side of the South Shore except for the one by Lake Tahoe Community College. The city of South Lake Tahoe, though, owns some of the improvements.

At issue Tuesday night at the school board meeting was whether the softball field still under construction at South Tahoe High is of equal caliber to what the boys play baseball on.

Board member Sue Novasel emphatically and repeatedly said they are not equal.

“It should be equal, which would be a fence and lighting,” Novasel told her fellow board members June 12.

Even with the 4-0 approval (Judy Cefalu was absent) to allocate $160,557 from the special reserve fund to pay for improvements, that doesn’t buy a fence or lights for the softball field.

Facilities Director Steve Morales is of the belief that what has been done and the worked slated to be done will comply with the Office of Civil Rights complaint filed in 2010 against the school district.

“It’s not a regulation size softball field and is a regulation baseball field,” Novasel countered.

The Title IX issue was not resolved at the meeting.

Morales and Novasel will make a list of what the district would like improved, with the high school softball field likely to be at the top.

The fields committee of the Measure R joint powers agreement will meet June 25 at 4pm at Lake Tahoe Airport. This group is running out of time to have a plan of action together before the JPA board meets July 27 to hear proposals and possibly vote on how to spend the half million dollars for field upgrades.