Petition: Finish What Alameda Voters Started. Build the Alameda High School Athletic Field.
We, the undersigned residents, parents, students, coaches, and taxpayers of Alameda, support AUSD's plan to build the Alameda High School athletic field at the Lum site, and we urge the Board of Education to keep the project on schedule.

Alameda High School has no regulation track. Its home field, Thompson Field, floods and develops ruts and holes every year, and the site is too small to fit a regulation track. AHS athletes train and compete on a facility that is failing. Meanwhile, Encinal Jr/Sr High School's new track and field stadium, budgeted at $21.4 million, opened in January 2026. Alameda's students should not be split into the school with a modern field and the school without one.

Voters already decided this. Measure B passed in June 2022 with 56.34% of the vote against a 55% threshold, authorizing roughly $298 million that expressly includes athletic facilities. The AHS field is one of the projects that money was approved for. Cancelling it after the vote is not a compromise. It is a reversal of a public decision.

The site is a school, not a backyard. The Lum campus has been a school site for almost 70 years, first as Lum Elementary and now as the temporary campus for the Wood Middle and Otis Elementary communities. It sits beside Ritler Park, where soccer and baseball have been played for countless years. The proposed facility would be built entirely within the existing campus grounds. Children, whistles, and school activity on this block are not new.

"Move it somewhere else" means "don't build it." AUSD analyzed four sites. Only the Lum site can fit both a regulation track and a regulation multi-sport field, sits near where AHS students live and attend school, and fits the project budget. Building at AHS would require demolishing existing buildings. Alameda Point is far from students and carries infrastructure problems. Thompson Field cannot hold a full track. Relocating now restarts environmental review and design, adds years of cost escalation, and in practice kills the facility.

Concerns deserve answers, and the process is producing them. AUSD has held three public meetings since March 2026. Its CEQA consultant has retained noise, light, and traffic experts whose findings and mitigation measures will be published in the Draft Environmental Impact Report, followed by a 45-day public comment period and a presentation to the Board of Education in December. Modern LED sports lighting is directional and can be aimed and shielded to limit spill onto neighboring homes. The plan already adds parking along the access roads and at Wood Middle School, and AUSD is coordinating with the City on traffic. Construction is not expected to begin until after Otis Elementary vacates the site in 2028. Demanding relocation before the studies are finished asks the district to decide with less information, not more.

This field is a community asset. Public school fields serve PE classes, youth leagues, band, graduations, and neighbors who want a safe, level place to walk or run. Alameda is short on flat, lighted, all-weather field space. This project adds it.

We ask the Board of Education to:
Keep the AHS athletic field at the Lum site in the Measure B program and on schedule.
Complete the EIR and adopt strong, enforceable mitigation for lighting, noise, and traffic.
Publish clear operating rules, including field hours and a nightly lighting curfew, so neighbors know exactly what to expect.
Reject calls to relocate the project, which would deny AHS students a regulation facility for years and put the funding at risk.
Alameda's students have waited long enough. Build the field.