The lights will stay on for marching band practice this fall at State College Area High School’s South Track Field after State College Borough Council took no action on the existing operating agreement with the school district on Monday night.
Council had until April 6 to give notice if it wished to terminate the agreement governing use of lights at the field, which have put the band and district at odds with some neighboring Greentree residents. If the agreement had been terminated, the school district would not have been able to use the lights at all.
“Clearly right now we don’t want to take any action to terminate the agreement,” Councilman Gopal Balachandran said. “That’s going to destroy all kinds of activities for students at State High. I think the prudent course of action is to not take any action. However… I think it’s important for us to talk and this way when we’re starting to negotiate… in terms of the future amendments that’s when we’ll have more substantive things we can hash out.”
As it stands, the marching band will be permitted to practice under the lights until 8 p.m. on Monday and 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, with all other events ending by 9 p.m. The band practices two nights a week for about 10 weeks between late August and late October.
The borough and school district can make changes by mutual agreement at any time. And both the district and neighboring residents want changes — though for vastly different reasons.
SCASD installed the 70-foot lights at the field — at a cost of $442,000 — in 2019 after council approved a zoning text amendment to allow their use under conditions of an operating agreement. The field is in a residential zoning district that otherwise would permit lights of up to 25 feet, which the district said is insufficient for sports events and band practices.
Residents who live in the nearby Greentree neighborhood say that since then the light and noise, particularly during the marching band’s practices, have become a serious disturbance on some nights each fall. They want the borough to limit band practice using lights at the field to 8 p.m. one night a week and for the agreement to end in three years, after which no events of any kind would be permitted after 8 p.m.
School district officials, meanwhile, say using the lighted field is a logistical necessity and the current agreement already diminishes practice time. They want the band to be able to use the lights until at least 8:45 p.m. two nights a week. In the long-term, the district believes the South Track parcel is improperly zoned to begin with and have begun the process to request a further zoning amendment that would allow the lights to be used until 11 p.m. without an operations agreement, as is the case in non-residential areas.
“That would be a disastrous outcome for homes on Edgewood Circle, Windsor Court and Sparks Street just to name a few,” said Derek Canova, who lives on Edgewood Circle, which is the closest street to the track and has homes as close as 112 feet away.
The original operating agreement permitted the band to practice under the lights until 9 p.m. two nights a week but was amended to scale that back to the current stop times in 2020. Since then district, borough and neighborhood representatives have tried to negotiate new terms but failed to reach an agreement.
At two previous work sessions and again on Monday night, residents, band members and school district officials made their cases.
Residents said that most of the affected homes were purchased more than a decade ago, before the referendum that enabled construction of the new high school on its existing property and long before the district indicated it would add lights to the field.
The marching band had practiced for decades on the parking lot in front of the old high school south building, more than 1,700 feet away from the nearest Greentree homes, and neighboring residents said that was never a problem. But when the new State High was constructed, that lot no longer existed.
Canova said that prior to the new high school construction SCASD had fewer fields and still managed to accommodate all of its activities.
Amy Bader, SCASD school board vice president, countered that the district only could accommodate activities at the expense of some students and that board members were eager to develop additional turf fields in conjunction with the new high school.
“When I joined the school board I learned the marching band was marching on asphalt,” Bader said. “This is unacceptable. It’s a health risk. It causes shin splints. It’s unsafe. It was inequitable for those students. For a long time SCASD prioritized athletics and did not give fair treatment to the band. When the referendum passed and we embarked on the school project is when I joined the board. We were eager to get the band an equitable space to practice.
“Frankly the neighbors’ assertion that there are other opportunities is completely false. The fact that we were able to operate all of our programs previously was because some students were treated inequitably and unfairly. Now that we have a moderate and decent number of fields we are able to provide our students equitable experiences.”
All who have spoken in opposition to the lights said they support the band but that the district has other options it is not using, like the North Field across Westerly Parkway on the north campus of the high school or its adjacent parking lot.
Chris English, a Greentree resident and parent of a band member, said the issue shouldn’t be pitting residents and the band against each other.
“I could write a dissertation on how much I like the band and the positive influence it’s had on our kid,” he said. “This approach misses the point. It’s not OK to practice several hundred feet from our homes multiple times a week with the ultimate goal of having no restrictions on this field whatsoever.
“This should not be a struggle between different families who love this band and are proud of this band, who appreciate the hard work this band, the director and the staff have put toward this project. This should be a common sense decision to protect families in the borough and give them the same protections everybody else takes for granted.”
The South Track field, district officials have said, is close to the high school’s music wing, while going to the North Field would necessitate students of varying mobilities lugging instruments and equipment around the building and across the street.
Besides, they said, each of the district’s fields are tightly scheduled nearly every night of the week and are not all designed to accommodate all of the same activities. Practicing in the North Field parking lot while an athletic competition was going on would be “chaos,” Randy Brown, SCASD operations and finance officer, said last month. Moving athletic competitions from the North Field to the South Track would often mean keeping the lights on later.
The band cannot practice earlier because it shares the South Track field with football practices and because, as a no-cut organization, it has many members involved in other activities.
Josh Lee, head drum major, said on Monday that many band members are involved in after-school activities that go into the late afternoon and early evening.
“During my time in the marching band I’ve realized that it’s a home to remarkable diversity and inclusivity and it brings together people of all kinds of cultures, backgrounds and traditions,” Lee said. “It really unites them into one larger front under a common goal and any loss of members would be a big shame.”
Canova suggested that the district must have some other place the band can practice on the 283 acres of property it owns.
Amber Concepcion, school board president, said that would require costly development of other parcels, as well as the complexity and challenges of bussing the band to another location.
“That’s not necessarily acreage thats developed in a manner that could support a marching band practice or potentially even other athletic practices,” she said. “The idea of having to bus students to other locations is of course very costly. It’s very difficult for us to hire bus drivers even in enough quantity to run the bussing that we do currently for our normal district transportation. That’s not really practical.”
Council members and Mayor Ezra Nanes expressed hope that a solution can be reached through further discussions and negotiation.
“My call to council and to [Borough Manager Tom Fountaine] would be let’s find a permanent solution that empowers the band and the school because we cannot cut back on the school,” Nanes said. “These programs cannot be curtailed. This is my opinion. We cannot damage them, take away equity, reduce access, those are not options for us. What we want to do is come together as a community and problem-solve our neighbors’ frustrations’ so that we can address those, so that our neighbors don’t feel that they’ve been denied their voice, that they’re taken care of. But that can’t come at the sacrifice of our school district.”
Added Councilman Peter Marshall, “We have opportunities in this next year to negotiate change. I mean, that’s not a closed subject. If we can come up with a compromise that is better than the present agreement then we’ll do it.”
