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.

LGUSD has a "Green School Operations" Policy ...   "The Governing Board believes that all citizens have a responsibility to be stewards of the environment and desires to integrate environmental accountability into all district operations. The Superintendent or designee shall promote green school practices that  conserve natural resources, reduce the impact of district operations on the environment, and protect the health of students, staff, and community." The policy explicitly calls out that it applies to decisions about "landscaping and grounds". The district has cited as justification for the proposal to install plastic fields that the act, technically, would not be illegal.  Likewise installing plastic fields would, technically, not be a formal violation of LGUSD's loosely-worded Green School Operations policy.   However, installing plastic fields would certainly constitute failing to uphold the spirit of this policy. Let's aim higher than sat...

Image from  socialmediaweek.org For more info, join the " Los Gatos Community Discussion: Artificial Turf on LGUSD fields ” Facebook Group or email questionplasticgrass@gmail.com  

PFAS are used in artificial turf manufacturing. They have been found in the blades and backing of fields in use , most later landfilled. So from site of manufacture to site of use to site of disposal, artificial turf potentially contributes to PFAS in people, environments, animals and water. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency , PFAS have been linked to: developmental delays in children, accelerated puberty, hormone interference, decreased fertility, reduced immune systems, including reduced vaccine response, increased risk of prostate/testicular cancers, high cholesterol, etc. The conclusion of the “ PFAS Strategic Roadmap: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Commitments to Action 2021-2024 ” includes a directive to local governments to exercise increased and sustained leadership to prevent new PFAS contamination. Call upon your local governments to fulfill this EPA directive they’ve been tasked with. Call upon them to landscape schools and parks w...

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 t...

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 ...

Share your input with the decision-makers, the LGUSD Board of Trustees. Images from lgusd.org Implore LGUSD to do these 2 things: Keep artificial turf OFF elementary school campuses ENTIRELY. Rescind the conclusion from the November 2021 district staff report that artificial turf is safe for use on school campuses.  This conclusion can not be drawn from the evidence available.  There remain an abundance of serious causes for concern.  Even California's Department of Toxic Substances Control is questioning the safety of artificial turf including versions NOT made with recycled tires researching artificial turf as part of its 2021-2023 Priority Product Work Plan. LGUSD has NOT sufficiently addressed artificial turf safety concerns by proposing to use a version made without recycled tires. Take action here .

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 conservati...

Image from The Story of Stuff  video in this post on "externalized costs". LGUSD is proposing to install artificial turf on its campuses.   Artificial turf contains PFAS. PFAS have been linked to reproductive problems, cancer and other health issues. Concerns have become grave enough that, as of just recently, California has: banned PFAS chemicals from items for young children and food packaging. (Beware: Artificial turf remains unregulated . Artificial turf is, incredulously , not classified as a childrens' product.) forbidden manufacturers of cookware to label their products as free of any particular toxic chemical if the pots or pans contain PFAS.  restricted use of environmental labels claiming product compostability or recyclability. PFAS is so persistent and so pervasive in our environment that, coupled with the fact that it bioaccumulates in our bodies, it's now found almost universally in blood and breastmilk samples tested! However, it is completely il...

Students at LGUSD's Lexington Elementary  practice, as explained at ibo.org , being knowledgeable,  open-minded, reflective, critical thinkers. As educators and parents, we know that "everybody else is doing it" is not a valid justification for anything. And, just like we all tell our kids:   In actuality , it is NOT true that "everybody else is doing it"... How does that lesson apply here? Schools and municipalities are NOT all following the masses, succumbing to sales pitches, and proceeding with artificial turf installations. Some are pausing to ask themselves if this is really a wise choice?  Especially in light of expert insights that were not yet available back when  other schools and municipalities chose to install them ?   For example, in 2005 when the Los Gatos Saratoga Union High School District (LGSUHSD) installed one of its first artificial turf fields, it was not widely known how much lead was in some of the fields.  As another example, in...

To conserve water costs, should we rob kids of equitable access to nature?   Certainly given increasingly-dense urban housing in Los Gatos, not every child's family is afforded their own private land from which to benefit from daily exposure to nature.   As a community working together to share natural resources, is THE place to severely restrict water the shared field? A field that may serve as the only regular daily exposure to nature that hundreds of our kids in dense, urban developments get? No. This is wrong. This constitutes an equity issue. LGUSD Equity Action Team and the many other Los Gatos community members that value equity, it's time to be an upstander for those children with less privilege. A tweet from LGUSD's superintendent about the district's commitment to equity. Elementary school play fields and public parks are absolutely the outdoor green spaces that make sense to judiciously water. In fact, this could very well be part of the rationale San Jos...

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?...

The Story of Stuff  explains "Externalized Costs" in the video below. As apparent from the financials in the district presentation, artificial turf will cost the district at least a million dollars more than natural grass. While that's already a jaw-dropping amount of money, it does not even reflect the full true costs of artificial turf products. This often goes unacknowledged because true costs are not reflected on financial expense records. There are costs to artificial turf that neither the district nor the community will pay with cash from their pockets. These are called "externalized costs". These costs include the costs to environmental and public health and extend beyond LGUSD campuses. These costs are incurred and effect real people along the entire length of this product's lifecycle, from the toxic pollution that comes from harvesting of natural resources, through manufacture, through degradation over years of exposure to the elements and foot ...

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...