DeKalb School Board Slots $2M For Baseball Field Upgrades

DEKALB COUNTY, GA — The baseball fields at Redan High School and Druid Hills Middle School will get $2 million total in improvements in the future.

The DeKalb County School District Board of Education members approved the $2 million expense at last Monday's board meeting, which will come from the Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (E-SPLOST) revenue.

These improvements were not allocated in the current iteration of E-SPLOST projects — approved by voters in May 2016 — so the district will use money from the SPLOST contingency fund for the upgrades, board members said last Monday.

The two schools were chosen based on the "urgent athletic needs of the students in these two clusters," according to school board documents.

The baseball programs at Redan and Druid Hills high schools — Druid Hills High uses Druid Hills Middle School's baseball field — have seen increased attendance at games and increased interest, so there's been more wear-and-tear on the fields as a "natural consequence of the attention and support" of the community, according to board agenda documents.

An official timeline for the project and more specific details of these improvements has yet to be released.

Once the Redan and Druid Hills projects are complete, the fields at Towers, Clarkston, Columbia, McNair, Southwest Dekalb, Lithonia, Martin Luther King Jr. and Stephenson high schools will be improved in that order, Chief Operations Officer D. Benjamin Estill said to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Additionally, board members also approved:

• $2.025 million from E-SPLOST fund for pavement upgrades at Canby Lane, Columbia, Flat Shoals, Rainbow and Snapfinger elementary schools
• $1.24 million from E-SPLOST fund for HVAC renovation at Hightower Elementary School
• rebranding of Redan Elementary School mascot and colors to be in line with Redan Middle and Redan High schools; colors will change from red and yellow to navy blue, silver and white, and mascot will change from Tigers to Raiders
• renaming of Southwest DeKalb High School gym floor/basketball court to be named after Coach Kathy Richey-Walton; tentatively takes effect June 1 with official dedication Aug. 17