WATSONVILLE—The Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees on Wednesday approved a contract for the design phase of a project that will eventually refurbish Watsonville High School’s aging sports facility.
The $240,000 contract with Campbell-based Sugimura Finney Architects—and the estimated $2 million for the project—is funded by Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, and approved by the state, said PVUSD Superintendent Dr. Michelle Rodriguez.
The overall project will focus on the school’s infamously rickety wooden bleachers as well as the press box and outdated and often malfunctioning restrooms.
The bleachers, said PVUSD Director of Maintenance, Operations and Facilities Gary Webb, have no seatbacks and put everyone on them at risk of falling through.
“I look at that and I’m terrified,” he said. “It keeps me up at night.”
WHS head football coach Anthony Valdivia agreed, saying that the bleachers annually hold thousands of students and spectators that use the fields for both athletic contests and graduations.
“I am in constant fear of our bleachers failing to sustain the amount of people that gather,” he said.
Maintenance workers who spoke about the bathrooms during the meeting described them as “an embarrassment,” with old pipes desperately in need of replacement and prone to backing up.
Trustee Jennifer Holm said that the expenditure will be an investment for the district.
“We hear a lot of talk from our community about maintaining our facilities, having a place that’s safe for our students, having places that are safe for community members, and I think this is one of those things we need to look at,” she said.
The item passed 6-0, with Trustee Georgia Acosta absent.
The field and track at WHS underwent a renovation last year, a project that was funded, in part, by a settlement between the district and the company FieldTurf.
