Uneven Playing Field: Parents Question Fairness in PSD Facilities

Peninsula High School parents say their students are being left behind — not in the classroom, but on the field. As district programs grow and facilities age, they ask why Seahawks athletes, musicians, and coaches must make do with less while Gig Harbor’s teams practice on better, brighter fields with fewer obstacles. To them, it’s not just about sports. It’s about fairness.

Peninsula School District officials said they “remain committed to providing safe, functional, and equitable facilities for all students across our campuses.” In an emailed statement to Key Peninsula News, the district said it manages facilities through a comprehensive approach that balances space demands, safety, and academics. But for many parents, those words don’t match what they see on any given day.

A Tale of Two Fields

On most fall afternoons at Peninsula High School, it’s hard to tell where one team ends and another begins. Football players run drills on half of Roy Anderson Field, while the girls soccer team practices corner kicks on the other. Nearby, marching band members use spray-painted lines on a shortened field to rehearse halftime routines.

For parent Stephanie Johnson, it’s a familiar sight — and a growing frustration.

“We have 100 football players sharing a field with 40 soccer players,” she said. “They’re supposed to be able to run full practices and prepare for games like everyone else, but there’s nowhere for them to go.”

At Gig Harbor, every major field is synthetic lighted turf, and another one appears to be in the planning stages. At Peninsula, there’s one turf field — Roy Anderson Field, shared by both high schools — and several grass surfaces that flood or turn to mud after heavy use.

Johnson, whose son plays both baseball and football, has spent two years documenting field-access disparities between the district’s two largest campuses. As an example, using PSD’s public Tandem scheduling calendar, she found that as of October, Gig Harbor’s girls soccer program logged about 264 hours of full-field turf time this season, compared to about 81 hours of half-field practice at Peninsula, a gap of more than 180 hours of play.

The district said it tracks only scheduled reservations, not actual field time, through its Tandem system. Day-to-day field use, it said, is managed by individual schools.

The district said that “both of our comprehensive high schools have the flexibility to schedule their practices for the duration needed to support their student athletes.”

Safety Comes at a Cost

The conditions don’t just inconvenience teams; they can endanger them. At Peninsula, parents say the lack of funding has pushed booster clubs to pick up the slack, sometimes covering costs that should fall to the district.

Swim parent Julia Buel said boosters were asked to buy new safety lane lines for the school pool after the district declined to cover the cost.

“The lane lines we have aren’t even the right size,” Buel said. “We’ve got homegrown fixes with chains and turnbuckles that are rusty and sharp.”

Baseball boosters, Johnson added, have also been asked to buy basic safety gear, even though WIAA rules require the district to provide it.

Anne Bunker, whose children run cross-country, said poor drainage and uneven surfaces have forced coaches to take runners off campus just to find safe routes.

“Our kids have to drive to Gateway Park just to find a proper trail,” Bunker said. “Who wants their kids running along busy Purdy Spit? It’s not just about fairness; it’s about safety and cost.”

The travel cuts into practice time, and paying for district buses would drain the program’s budget, she said. Younger runners without rides often must skip practice altogether.

The varsity baseball team also practices and plays at Sehmel Park because the field on campus can’t handle multiple teams. Like the cross-country runners, some baseball players rely on older teammates because bus costs, parents say, are also out of reach.

Band booster Misty Pomeroy said the problem extends beyond sports. While Gig Harbor teams practice under stadium lights, Peninsula’s marching band boosters had to rent temporary lighting, and sometimes waited weeks for the district to install it.

“For a month, they were up there in the dark trying to march,” Pomeroy said.

Because the band rarely has access to the football field, boosters buy field paint to turn the baseball field into a makeshift gridiron. They mark yard lines so members can learn the exact spacing for halftime shows at Roy Anderson Field. Boosters also cover all repair costs from their own fundraising.

“It’s not about having fancy stuff,” Pomeroy said. “It’s about giving the kids the basics they need to do their best.”

Sometimes it’s not just about safety, it’s about the way things were built. The track around Roy Anderson Field is shorter than regulation, and the pool doesn’t meet 25-yard race standards. The size mismatches prevent Peninsula from hosting district-level meets and force athletes to train under mismatched conditions, while Gig Harbor athletes train on regulation-grade surfaces.

Where Does the Money Go?

If all fields fall under the same district, parents ask, why is there such a gap in quality and care?

Johnson believes the answer lies in how PSD manages rental revenue.

Each year, the district rents its gyms, fields, and auditoriums to community groups: churches, club teams, Harbor Soccer, Peninsula Youth Football, and others. The income adds up quickly.

In just nine days last October, two turf fields and a baseball field at Gig Harbor High brought in $14,000, according to Johnson’s research.

That’s not counting dozens of other rentals across the district’s 17 schools. All that money must go somewhere, but parents say there’s little visibility into how it’s spent. PSD confirmed that facilities rental income — more than half a million dollars in the 2024-25 fiscal year — is deposited into the district’s general fund, used primarily for custodial and facilities staffing and general maintenance costs. The rental revenue, the district said, doesn’t generate sufficient funds to cover major capital projects like installing turf fields.

The district budgets a consolidated amount for overall facility maintenance across all district properties. Each January, the district facilities team creates a list of projects based on “safety needs, educational impact, and condition of the facilities,” funding the projects until budget resources are exhausted.” Parents counter that even the most basic repairs linger for years, citing broken scoreboards, leaking irrigation, and uneven grass fields.

The district also confirmed it hasn’t conducted a formal Title IX assessment of its athletic facilities in at least five years, a review meant to ensure fairness between male and female athletes. Without one, parents say, inequities are left to fester without oversight and documentation.

Little League, Big Divide

The inequity isn’t limited to high schools. Johnson’s review of rental logs shows wide gaps between youth teams using Gig Harbor facilities and those on the Peninsula side.

Johnson found Peninsula Youth Football’s Tides teams use two lighted turf fields at Gig Harbor High School, paying about $13,800 in total rental fees for the season. Their Seahawks counterparts practice on an unlit grass field at Purdy Elementary School and the district office, paying just $864 — but at the cost of quality, fairness, and safety.

“Every kid pays the same $450 to play,” Johnson said. “But one side gets lighted turf, and the other gets mud and darkness.”

By midseason, the grass fields become what one coach described as “ankle-breakers.”

Michael Perrow, a former Gig Harbor City Council member and current member of the Gig Harbor Peninsula Youth Sports Coalition, has spent years urging the district to fix those disparities.

“It’s bad government,” Perrow said. “Take care of what you have and stop blaming the community for the condition of your own facilities.”

In their statement, district officials said proper grass-field maintenance “requires removing fields from the usage cycle for approximately six months each year to allow grass to recover.” With limited field space, they said, it’s difficult to rotate fields out of play without hurting school and community programs.

Overwatering and neglected storm drains are making things worse, Perrow said. Public records show some campuses using millions of gallons of water each year to maintain fields that flood when overwatered, costing more than $10,000 annually at several sites.

The combination of poor drainage and inconsistent maintenance, he said, leaves some fields nearly unusable.

The PenMet Agreement: Two Sides of the Line

It’s not just poor maintenance that frustrates Perrow. He said a facility-use agreement between PSD and PenMet Parks, designed to share access to gyms and fields, has instead deepened the divide.

Under the deal, he said, PenMet uses school gyms for youth basketball, while the district can use PenMet’s turf fields for school sports — all at no cost. But there’s a catch, Perrow said: PenMet gives registration priority to its own taxpayers, shutting out most Key Peninsula and some Gig Harbor city residents for the first week of sign-ups and tacking on a 20% “out-of-district” fee.

“It’s not acceptable for the school district to give PenMet free use of its facilities when PenMet doesn’t treat all district residents equally,” Perrow said at a recent school board meeting.

He urged the district to renegotiate the deal so all PSD residents — including the Key Peninsula — are treated equally.

“The only boundary that should matter,” he told board members, “is the school district boundary.”

The district responded that school programs always receive priority access, and community groups use facilities only when they don’t conflict with school operations.

The Well’s Run Dry

It doesn’t look like it’ll get much better. The 2027–29 levy plan offers a glimpse at why the imbalance persists: Most new revenue is earmarked for operational costs like staff pay, programs, and transportation, with little left for field upgrades or maintenance.

“Like many public school districts in Washington, PSD faces the ongoing challenge of maintaining extensive facilities with a limited and fluctuating revenue stream,” the district said in its statement.

The levy plan lists minor funds for “facility modernization” but no significant investments in turf, lighting, or athletic upgrades. That leaves the district dependent on future bonds, an uncertain prospect after several failed attempts.

“Even if a bond passed tomorrow,” Johnson said, “we wouldn’t see a new school or new fields until 2032. We can’t wait that long.”

Perrow agreed: “They keep saying they don’t want to fix Peninsula because they plan to build a new one,” he said. “But that doesn’t help the students playing there now.”

PSD denied that claim outright and said there are no active plans to build a new school or stadium that would affect current investments, though the district’s long-range planning committee continues to evaluate future needs.

The Case for Turf

For parents like Pomeroy, turf isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity. With built-in drainage systems, synthetic fields can handle year-round use, even during the area’s wettest months.

“If it’s a drainage problem, you need to turf it,” Pomeroy said. “Otherwise, you’ll just keep pouring money into mud.”

A single well-maintained turf field can host soccer, football, lacrosse, band, and community events without tearing up the surface.

By contrast, Roy Anderson Field is overused and, when closed for repairs, leaves the school in a bind.

But turf isn’t a silver bullet: while it can solve drainage and usage bottlenecks, it comes with a high upfront cost, with many companies quoting between $700,000 to $1.5 million to install, and annual maintenance up to $23,000, according to KP News research into regional turf companies. The district said these costs must be weighed against “classroom needs.”

A Fair Shot

Despite their frustration, most parents say they aren’t looking to pit one school against the other. They just want equity, transparency, and a plan.

Johnson outlined three practical steps the district could take:

Turf the baseball field off 144th Street to create a multi-sport surface for soccer, baseball, softball, and marching band.

Develop Purdy Elementary’s open field into a district-wide recreation site with lighted turf — an idea parents frame as a Peninsula counterpart to Gig Harbor High’s planned lighted turf field.

Publish a transparent breakdown showing how much rental revenue is reinvested in facilities.

“Why not improve what we already have?” Johnson said. “Purdy could be a huge success for the whole community.”

Bunker said the district needs to acknowledge the hidden costs of inequity: transportation, safety, and morale.

“Our kids deserve to practice safely on their own campus,” she said. “That shouldn’t depend on which side of the bridge they live on.”

And Buel said small steps, like replacing the unsafe pool equipment, would show that parents’ concerns are being heard.

“We don’t want to be better than anyone,” she said. “We just want safe, functional  facilities.”

Transparency and Trust

Parents say this isn’t about who has nicer fields, it’s about trust. They want to know whether a district that promotes equity is willing to invest in ways that treat every community the same.

“We’re not asking for miracles,” Johnson said. “Just equal opportunity for all our students.”

Youth coach Alvin Coit, a father of three district athletes, said it’s not just about better equipment and facilities. It’s about what message the district sends to students.

“The district has a responsibility to utilize taxpayer dollars fairly,” Coit wrote in an email to KP News. “They’re showing our students that the neighborhood they come from affects the opportunities they’re given. That’s not just troublesome — it’s disturbing.”

Coit called for an immediate review of field scheduling, rental revenue, and maintenance practices — and a public plan to fix them.

Others say the district’s silence speaks for itself.

“It’s one of three things,” Johnson said. “Either they don’t know this is happening, they don’t have time to fix it, or they are waiting for our kids to graduate and we all go away. We’re not going away.”

The district said it “values the vital role athletic programs play” but must “balance the educational needs before allocating remaining funds to athletic improvements.” In other words, classroom needs come first. That explanation may not satisfy those demanding equity in sports, but it confirms the crux of the issue: sports, maintenance, and the classroom experience are all competing for the same shrinking pool of district dollars.