Is turf field access fair in this Pierce Co. school district? Changes are coming
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Some parents allege Key Peninsula schools have less time on turf than Gig Harbor schools.
- Peninsula School District says online calendar doesn't perfectly represent practice time.
- District says financial constraints limit turf renovations.
Do some teams get more practice on turf fields than others in the Peninsula School District?
Stephanie Johnson has spent the last few years trying to raise awareness about what she alleges is a lack of equitable access to turf fields for students on the Key Peninsula compared to Gig Harbor. Her two sons attend Harbor Ridge Middle School and Peninsula High School and play baseball, basketball and football. Johnson also serves as liaison for the Peninsula High School Volunteer Parent Organization (VPO).
“We don’t have enough practice time, ever,” Johnson said in a phone call June 5.
In a post on Facebook April 30, Johnson shared data from the district’s online events calendar, Tandem suggesting that Key Peninsula teams clocked far fewer hours on turf fields than Gig Harbor teams in the 2025 season. For example, she alleged that Peninsula High School’s girls’ soccer team had about 83 hours of practice on a shared turf field, as opposed to the Gig Harbor girls’ soccer team’s 260 hours on a field to themselves.
The district hasn’t denied those numbers, though they’ve clarified that the Tandem calendar only reflects time that teams have reserved, not how long they were actually there. In a phone interview May 7, the district’s Chief of Schools Michael Farmer said that the district is working with athletic directors and coaches to ensure that teams only reserve the fields for as long as they need the space.
Farmer also said he couldn’t speak accurately to whether Key Peninsula and Gig Harbor schools face disparities in their access to turf fields, but pointed out that access to turf is generally limited. The district’s turf fields are Roy Anderson Field at Peninsula High School, one field at Harbor Ridge Middle School and two upper turf fields at Gig Harbor High School.
Work is also underway on a renovation to Gig Harbor High School’s lower track and field. The district is spending roughly $3.1 million to convert the natural grass field to synthetic turf and add field lighting and potentially a new scoreboard, The News Tribune reported.
Inequity or a scheduling issue?
Kerri Charles is president of the Peninsula High School VPO and served on the district’s Long Range Facility Advisory Committee from 2024-2025. The district recruited volunteers to the committee to tour the district’s facilities and provide input on the most pressing needs, culminating in a report to the school board last June.
Charles noted that after the district finishes installing synthetic turf at Gig Harbor High School’s lower field, GHHS will have three turf fields plus shared access to Roy Anderson Field, a turf field at Peninsula High School that serves as the district’s only full size stadium. The district told The News Tribune in April that construction is expected to wrap up in September.
Meanwhile, Peninsula High School teams are limited to sharing Roy Anderson, she said. High school teams do not use Harbor Ridge Middle School’s turf field because of the travel time and because it would cut into the middle school use times, she clarified in a text message. That field is used for soccer, track and cross country at the middle school level and has hosted teams from community groups like Peninsula Youth Football and Harbor Soccer.
“We would just like to see some type of fairness,” said Charles. “I think that’s the gist ... that we hear back, especially as being a booster (club member), and facilitating so many meetings and hearing so many comments from our booster reps and our clubs and sports and teams.”
She also said the Long Range Facility Advisory Committee did not make the decision to convert the Gig Harbor High School lower field to turf. She learned of those plans when the district announced it at a school board meeting, she said.
Charles described how coaches plan around each other to share the limited field space. For example, the PHS football team and girls’ soccer team have had to share Roy Anderson Field for practices, she said.
“ ... the coaches communicate and do that scheduling with each other already ... they kind of figure that out behind the scenes,” she said. “Sometimes they’re startled, or (think) ... I thought I had the field today.”
Wendy Malich, the district’s director of athletics and activities, told The News Tribune via email that a designated person helps reserve field time for coaches at each school.
“If two coaches want the same field at the same time it does not necessarily go to the first coach who reserved it,” she wrote. “It is vetted by the athletic director who looks at the overall picture and determines who gets the field. PSD athletics and activities have priority over community use groups. The athletic directors must work with the coaches ‘in-season’ to determine the needs of each program and schedule field use accordingly.”
Peninsula Youth Football & Cheer is one community organization that rents field space from the school district. PYFC Chair Rebecca Werner responded in an email June 5 after a reporter asked if the organization had concerns with equitable access to fields for their Key Peninsula and Gig Harbor teams.
“Regarding the concern that one side of Peninsula Youth Football receives more turf field access than the other, our experience is that field availability varies from season to season based on facility availability, scheduling constraints, stakeholder input, school district access, field maintenance schedules, and the needs of individual teams,” Werner wrote. “As a result, field access has depended on the circumstances of each particular season.”
She added that the larger issue is the growing demand for athletic field resources and quality practice and competition space. “We appreciate our collaborations with Peninsula School District, PenMet and the YMCA and support future opportunities for additional athletic fields in the area,” she wrote.
Farmer, the district’s chief of schools, confirmed in an email May 13 that Tandem, the district’s events calendar, is the platform used to reserve fields for both district activities and community rentals. The calendar confirms that the PHS football team and girls’ soccer team have had to share Roy Anderson Field. For example, the PHS girls soccer team had practice scheduled at Roy Anderson from 2:30-4:30 p.m. and the PHS football team had practice from 2 to 6 p.m. most weekdays in September 2025.
“Both of our comprehensive high schools have the flexibility to schedule their practices for the duration needed to support their student athletes,” Farmer wrote.
But he noted that the Tandem calendar doesn’t accurately reflect actual practice time. Some coaches are requesting more time than necessary and aren’t using the field for the full duration of their reservation, Farmer wrote. Starting in the 2026-2027 school year, the district will have guidelines for coaches on how much field time to reserve.
“Some coaches request way more time than others,” he wrote. “We are working to standardize practice lengths in Tandem for fall 2026. The time coaches request should reflect actual use, which is currently not showing accurately in Tandem.”
As for who gets priority use of the fields, Farmer wrote that school-related and district-sponsored activities get priority over community rentals. After that, sports that are in season get priority. For example, youth football is a fall sport and will take priority in the fall over lacrosse, which has a spring season, he wrote. A community use specialist processes requests through Tandem and makes the final determination.
The News Tribune asked if the district has data available showing how much time each group or team has reserved on the school’s turf fields this school year. Farmer wrote that the Tandem calendar “is the repository for all this information.”
Where does the money for upgrading fields come from?
In an interview last December, Peninsula School District Chief Financial Officer Ashley Murphy spoke of the district’s limited resources for upgrading athletic fields, despite their awareness of the need.
“A public school district’s primary responsibility is the education of students,” Murphy said. “... first and foremost, our funding needs to be dedicated to the education of students.”
The state contributes $0 for athletic field maintenance and renovation, she continued. That means that the district has to make some hard choices about what to cover and not cover with their limited resources from the state. The district also doesn’t bring in enough money through rental fees to cover the cost of a turf field, she said.
The district passed a levy in February that includes funds for facility maintenance. In 2027, the district is set to collect $35.8 million from the levy, and spend roughly $4.5 million of that sum on facility grounds maintenance, Murphy explained. Some of the $4.5 million also covers salary and benefits for four new grounds crew members hired to keep the fields in shape. The remainder of that sum will go toward other costs not covered by state funding, including additional staffing, athletics and sports teams, after-school activities, arts and music, early learning and highly capable programs, curriculum updates and transportation.
“What these dollars do not do is turf our grass athletic fields,” Murphy said. “That is not enough dollars to actually turf our athletic fields.”
The levy passed in February was a renewal of the district’s existing Educational Programs and Operations (EP&O) levy, which expires at the end of this year. Under the existing levy rate of $1.81 per $1,000 in assessed value, an owner of a $500,000 home pays about $905 a year.
Under the new levy rate, which will take effect in 2027, an owner of a $500,000 home will pay about $995 a year, or about $7.50 more each month, according to the Peninsula School District website.
