School board discusses Citizens Field and hears from the public about ICE guidance, teacher raises, and menstrual products in restrooms at Eastside High School

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their March 12 meeting, the School Board of Alachua County discussed a request from the City of Gainesville to provide funds for the renovation of Citizens Field; voted to appeal the Newberry charter school (covered in another article); and heard public comment from citizens who objected to the district’s guidance on interactions with ICE, teachers who wanted a bigger salary increase, and students who were prevented from providing menstrual products in bathrooms at Eastside High School.

Citizens Field

Gainesville City Manager Cynthia Curry, joined by Mayor Harvey Ward; City Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut; Chief Operating Officer Andrew Persons; and Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs Director Roxy Gonzalez, said that the City’s partnership with the School Board to use Citizens Field will terminate at the end of the 2025-26 school year. She said that the field and “quite frankly, the stadium, is in disrepair, as you can well imagine,” the City is planning to invest “significant” resources into that area, and the City wants feedback from the School Board.

Laurie Hall, a landscape architect from NV5, said her firm is working on the entire northeast complex, not just Citizens Field, and added that the pool at the complex is also used by area schools. 

Member Thomas Vu asked what the City was requesting from the School Board, and Curry said, “We are asking for a partnership, and yes, some consideration of maybe how we move forward… As we move forward with scoping this project and doing an estimation of cost, we’d like to better understand how the School Board might be interested in participating and helping to fund – particularly the Citizens Field portion of this project, and so we’d like to get that discussion going, if we could.”

Vu responded, “So to be clear, it’s a money ask.”

Certain proposes asking the City to transfer the stadium property to the school board

Member Tina Certain said the School Board is constrained in its ability to make investments in a property that the district doesn’t own and added that the district “has made investments in the upkeep and maintenance since we have been using it.” She said she would like the Superintendent to ask the City whether they would “entertain transferring just the Citizens Field portion to us so that we could do some work with that.” She said the School Board could use capital money to redevelop the stadium if they owned the property, but they could not put “significant dollars” into a property they don’t own.

Member Leanetta McNealy said, “We need to maintain and help, even though [there’s] funding involved, colleagues. We need to have that in this section of our community… I’m all for working with the City in some manner in getting this property restored and resurfaced.”

Vu said again that he didn’t understand what the City wanted from the School Board because they would have to spend General Fund money to update the stadium and “the General Fund is some of the only funds that we can use to do things like pay our teachers.”

Temporary solutions could involve sharing stadiums of temporary stadiums at BHS and EHS

Director of Planning and Construction Suzanne Wynn said the sales tax referendum did not include athletic facilities, so that money can’t be used for this project. She presented several options for temporary solutions starting in 2026, including temporary stadiums at Eastside High School and Buchholz High School (which would leave GHS without a field) or pairing schools, with GHS playing at Santa Fe High School, Eastside playing at Hawthorne, and Buchholz playing at Newberry High School. 

Permanent solutions include two renovation options at Citizens Field, building a new stadium at Citizens Field (both of which would require the City to sign over the property), and building a new stadium at Old Terwilliger, Loften, or Diamond Sports Park. The Old Terwilliger property could also be sold to raise more money for a stadium at another site.

Motion

Certain made a motion to “direct the Superintendent to engage with the City Manager and City staff to develop a plan for the transfer of Citizens Field to the School Board; the plan may include just an outright transfer or an exchange of property… and the Superintendent can report back the findings with the recommendations for a proposed agreement, for review and approval.” McNealy seconded the motion.

Vu said he supported making the stadium a facility that can host state-level championships, “something that could actually be a revenue driver for the district… If we have just the stadium, this just becomes another thing we’re just constantly spending money on. And yes, our kids should have a nice facility, but we’re not controlling the whole property. We’re not controlling parking; we’re not controlling any other part of it. And that, to me, is really problematic.”

Amendment proposed but not accepted

Vu offered an amendment to the motion to direct the Superintendent to develop a plan to transfer the entire property, including the pools and fields, from the City to the School Board. Certain, however, said she wanted to stick with her original motion: “Our district cannot afford renovating the whole complex – that’s biting off more.”

Superintendent Kamela Patton said any agreement with the City would need to include parking “because you can’t have a field without some kind of an agreement about parking.”

City Manager Curry said she welcomed discussions with the Superintendent and the board’s interest in “having these conversations and potential negotiations that may end up with a partnership. I just don’t know what that looks like.” She said the City Commission would be discussing the property the next day.

Capital funds are needed to repair and expand schools

Wynn said she wanted to remind everyone about “our limited capital funds that we have for all of the work that we need to do. And we do own properties where a stadium can be accommodated, and if we purchase a property or trade a property of ours, that will, in essence, cost us more money to do Citizens Field… The other piece that concerns me is the length of time the negotiations can take,… because the longer the negotiations take, the longer the design and construction takes, the more time our students won’t be in a permanent stadium.”

Vu said, “I really like that feedback… because… we have a bunch of facilities that are falling apart.” He gave examples of HVAC problems that have not been addressed, “and this is just now $30-35 million in today’s dollars, which I imagine will run over into the $40-45 million range eventually, that doesn’t go to our schools and facilities on the actual day-to-day of what we’re supposed to do here.” He said the whole thing felt “nebulous, full of delays.”

Chair Sarah Rockwell said she also appreciated the warning about limited capital funds and thought it would be important to sell the Old Terwilliger property “for as much money as we could get” to fund the stadium renovations.

During public comment on the motion, two people advocated for continuing to play high school games at Citizens Field; Carrie Parker-Warren said the City should keep the property, develop it, and charge the school board to use it.

Vote

Certain’s motion passed 3-1, with Vu in dissent.

Public input

During public input, 18 people expressed concern with the district’s guidance on interactions with ICE, and nine teachers asked the district to offer more than the 2.6% increase (1.6% plus a 1% step increase) that was voted down by the teachers on January 15.

Three Eastside High School students and a parent spoke about the students’ Period Box initiative, which had placed free menstrual products in women’s restrooms for two years but was recently “banned”; one student said she had been told that the effort was controversial, but she said it aligns with Florida statutes that encourage schools and school district to provide free menstrual products in schools. She said, “We want to have a clear reason why our advocacy is being met with disciplinary suspicions and pressures… We are fighting tooth and nail for basic dignity. Please let us continue this pivotal program because period products are not controversial; they’re an essential need.”

Superintendent Patton interjected, “I’ve learned there’s a little bit of a conflict here, and these young women have actually not been in the meeting. The principal’s been in a meeting, the district, so we’ve talked with them that we’re gonna get everybody together in the same room.”

After several board members said they were concerned about the issue and wanted to be kept updated on it, Patton added, “The main concern to me is that people that have had the issue haven’t been in the meeting… The main people have been left out of a direct conversation, as I understand it.”

She also said the district “interpreted the law a little bit differently… Sometimes we’re right, sometimes we’re not, but we want to just make sure that no matter what, that these people that have taken the time, they hear directly.”

Certain said she was particularly bothered by the threat of disciplinary action and wanted to emphasize “how we handle citizens, the parents when they come to our schools, as well as students, because we have to provide good customer service. We want to keep our students. We don’t want people getting hacked off with us and leaving.”

Certain: “I don’t want anyone to think that, because we had the discussion about a transaction with the City, that those are funds that could be used for staff raises, because they can’t.”

After the eighth teacher complained about the proposed salary increase and several others had made comments about the district having money for a stadium while not giving teachers more money, Certain said the district’s funds for operations and salaries are set in Tallahassee and are separate from capital funds that are used for roofs, buildings, and athletic facilities. She said local voters have approved a half-cent sales tax that can be used for renovations and expanding school capacity and the 1.5 capital mill that can be used for athletics, air conditioning units, roofs, and similar needs. She said capital funds come from those two voter-approved sources, not the General Fund.  

Certain continued, “I don’t want anyone to think that, because we had the discussion about a transaction with the City, that those are funds that could be used for staff raises, because they can’t.” She added that if the district loses access to the Citizens Field stadium, none of the three Gainesville high schools will have a stadium, “so we have to do something.”

She suggested putting together materials for staff, explaining the funding from the state, because “whereas we may want to do and give a living wage that keeps up with inflation, if that is not what the legislature appropriates and allocates to our district, we’re not able to do that – or we have to make some changes and make cuts… And there are all of these different things that we have to do and mandates from the state, and they don’t always fund them… There are a lot of competing interests and things that have to be done and a lot of hard decisions that this board is going to have to make,.. and they’re not going to all be popular decisions with our community.”

Patton added, “Bottom line: those are dollars, capital, that cannot be used toward employee salaries.”