ALTERNATIVES TO ARTIFICIAL TURF:

There is an alternative to artificial turf.  It's called grass.  The cost for using grass is infinitely cheaper than using artificial turf.  Turf vendors are cozy-cozy with school district administrators.  I know that from chatting with them at school board conventions in the past.  They know everyone that matters by their first name.  We don't even have to speculate about how they got to know them.  Some of them are former coaches.  But mostly they just "know."

The year before Alton Frailey decided to spend millions of dollars, that the District didn't have to spend, on putting artificial turf on the practice fields of the six Katy high schools, those same fields had been redone and grass had been installed. Not one coach had complained about the grass, I'm told.

At the Cinco Ranch a contractor specializing in grass fields was permitted to install one of their grass surfaces with the accompanying irrigation system.. 

Everybody loved it, but the coaches acted like they weren't interested.  No one could figure out why.

The company that installed it (for free) showed them how the fields could be improved and how the costs of fertilizer, labor and pesticides that were used could be reduced. My understanding was that using this system would have cost $500,000 for ten years (at all six high schools)--saving $4.5 million.

Of course grass, besides being cheaper, is also safer, better looking, and more environmentally sound. 

But all that didn't matter to our superintendent. He's more concerned with appearances, it seems, rather than the welfare of the students.

In my opinion, ripping up those grass fields and installing artificial turf instead was a mindless, senseless, arrogant thing to do, and the superintendent is solely responsible for this dumb move.