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When it comes to football at Mountain View and Los Altos high schools, light is always in short supply. The window between when school lets out and when the sun goes down leaves little time for outdoor athletics, and teams are forced to pack up and head home by dusk. The reason? Neither school has field lights.
But that could change. Earlier this month, a group of high school parents launched an online petition urging Mountain View-Los Altos High School District officials to install field lights on the athletic fields at both high schools, extending the hours that students and community members can participate in outdoor sports and events. The petition picked up more than 1,000 supporters within the first few days, which has since risen to 1,689 as more students, parents and school alumni added their support to the effort.
The district’s two high schools are among only a few in Santa Clara County with unlit fields, according to the petition, an anomaly among similar high school districts in the region, including Palo Alto Unified and Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District. By installing lights, the schools would have a larger window of time to host sporting events, and could finally open up enough time in the schedule for frosh-soph teams to practice and play games at the schools. Supporters say the evening hours also open the door for working parents and community members to participate in school events.
Adding field lights would be a big help in avoiding scheduling conflicts created by the state Legislature, the petition argues. Senate Bill 328, which cleared the state Senate earlier this year, calls for middle and high schools to start first period no earlier than 8:30 a.m., effectively pushing the end of the school day out to 4 p.m. and leaving just one hour of day light for sports activities in the winter.
The petition has the support of both the Mountain View High School Sports Boosters Club and the Los Altos High School Athletic Boosters.
Los Altos High School parent Bob Crissman, who started the petition, said school field space is limited at both schools and hasn’t grown to keep up with decades of enrollment increases. Extending the schedule into evening hours, he said, would open the door for more soccer teams, allow spring sports teams like lacrosse to start practice earlier in the year, and would shed some much-needed light on the marching band rehearsals.
“Our marching band doesn’t get a lot of time to practice,” Crissman said. “They’re bumping into each other because they’re practicing in the dark.”
School district officials are taking an unusually cautious approach to the petition, filtering all inquiries on field lights to Superintendent Jeff Harding, who in turn refers questions to the district’s public information officer. The reason could be one of precedent: Back in 2012, the school district met with a firestorm of opposition when it considered using temporary lights for a single event — an evening homecoming game — at Mountain View High School.
At the time, angry residents raised a plethora of concerns that went beyond light spilling onto their properties, including worries about noise, traffic, vandalism and even increased alcohol and drug use. Some accused the district of using the homecoming game as a deceptive tactic to install permanent lights without listening to neighborhood concerns.
Harding met with four field lights proponents shortly after the petition launched, and last week met with “several neighborhood opponents” of the idea, according to district spokeswoman Cynthia Greaves. She said the meetings are “conversations only” and that any future decision on field lights would come after a lengthy period of community involvement and transparency.
“Other than fact-finding and conversations, no action will be taken in the immediate future,” she said.
Harding declined to comment for the story, citing a need to better inform the board before deciding how to best approach the issue, Greaves said. Mountain View High School Principal Dave Grissom also declined to comment, and said he is referring any media inquiries on athletic field lights to the superintendent.
Controversy over field lights stems partly from the fact that both Mountain View and Los Altos high schools are surrounded on all sides by single-family homes, with football fields on the edge of both campuses abutting homes directly to the west and the south. St. Francis High School, by comparison, has its football field field tucked squarely in the center of hospital facilities, medical offices and other school buildings, creating a sizable buffer zone.
Despite bordering a residential neighborhood, Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View has had evening lights on its field space for years, allowing athletic events to continue from sunset to 10 p.m. The Mountain View Whisman School District is in the middle of building a new athletic field on the campus, which will replace the existing incandescent lights with high-powered LED lamps mounted on four 70-foot poles.
Although an environmental review of the project found that the new fixtures could result in significant glare for nearby residents, the lights can be adjusted to bring brightness down to less than 2,000 “candelas,” a unit of measurement for light intensity emitted at an angle.
Greaves said she could not speak to why field lights weren’t included in the original design of the schools, and while it has been a topic of discussion in the past, the board has not taken formal action for or against athletic field lightning. Lights are not included in the district’s new facilities master plan, which is due for completion this fall, but preliminary cost estimates show installing lights would cost $600,000 per school.
Crissman said the parents leading the charge on field lights want to maintain an “open dialogue” with the district as well as the neighbors who would be directly affected by extended hours on the athletic fields, and said any plan of action needs to come with plenty of community input.
Its VERY sad and VERRY pathetic that there are no lights on our fields. I would support a process started where the VOTERS have a say instead of a handful of whiny neighbors and the Council who seem to be holding up progress?
This article overlooks several obvious facts. One is that the other schools in the county have also not had lights for most of their history. Second is that while the schools have 20 acres of fields available during daylight hours, only 1.3 acres of football field with artificial turf would be lit under this proposal. The added field time would be limited and there are questions about adding extra use to artificial turf. To think that community groups are going to get time on the field is ludicrous. Third is that with a 100 foot setback, which would be required due to the bleacher locations, the height of the lights would be 100 feet, not 70 feet. Forth, the
reason there are no frosh/soph teams is funding and interest related. Back in history there were such teams, and there were no lights at that point. Interest among students
in high school football is waning nationwide. In our area with affluent parents
focused on academics, the interest is below average. It could be that this attempt
to revive the past is destined to failure anyway. This type of event is a curiosity for today’s students. Interest will wane over time. The high schools have been
there for 60 years or so, and we got along fine without lights all this time.
At a time when the realization that high school football players suffer some permanent
brain injury, we don’t need to glorify the activity with $1.2 Million in funding.
Finally, a big impact would be felt from the desired goal of increased use of the football field later at night. Mountain View High recently had a night game with
temporary lights, and the disturbance lasted past 11pm. There was no crowd control
and there was a lot of traffic late at night on residential streets which are not
well suited for such traffic even in the daytime when visibility is better.
The motives of those pushing this are strictly
The motives of those pushing this are strictly for football. At a time when
there is evidence that high school football players are suffering permanent
brain injury, there is not need to glorify the activity by extra funding. $1.2
Million could be better spent, as could the operational costs of running these
lights and managing these late night activities.
This is such a bad idea. I have no interest in supporting more kids getting hurt playing football. This is not 1960.
@Lights are Bad: 1) Why did you continue your post just to repeat what you said at the end of your original one? 2) your premise about affluent parents pushing their kids away from attending games, the games at St. Francis (closest local example I can think of) are HUGELY attended and popular, and you don’t get much more affluent and academically minded parents than that.
Wonderful idea!
This made me chuckle as a side note:
“One is that the other schools in the county have also not had lights for most of their history.”
If one of my employees came to me stating his first compelling reason for doing or not doing something is because others do or don’t do it…well, he’d be fired next opportunity 😉
Those pushing the lights are indeed citing as a reason the fact that over the
last few years, other school districts in the county have finally added
lights after not doing so for decades.
Now what they are doing is copying the state of Texas, probably based on
the movie and TV show “Friday Night Lights'” It’s a matter of pop culture
glamorizing and idealizing this idea of the small community coming together
around the local high school football team on Friday night after dark.
Never mind that Texas has a terrible educational system and high rates
of teen pregnancy and so forth. We need to “Progress” to be more like
Texas.
$1.2 million for lights for football? Forgetaboutit!
Just more time for kids to injure themselves.
Mountain View High School is deep in a residual area that doesn’t need the disturbance of lights at night. This is not a new discussion. It goes back to when they first opened as Awalt High School. Neighbors had the same complaint then when the subject came up and weren’t shy to let the school know. At that time, Mountain View High School on Castro Street did have lights.
Now with lights comes a lot more problems. Just ask anyone who lives around St. Francis and they can tell you when an evening sports event is on, since we can hear the announcer like he is in your very back yard. Bands, crowds cheering and even starting guns sound loud and clear. End of game traffic noise is common late at night.
The poor MVHS neighbors put up with enough having the school in their neighborhood. Give them some peace at night and use the money where it can benefit the whole school, not just a football team.
Lighten up you guys. (Couldn’t resist) Those of you who bought a house near a high school, tsk tsk. You knew there would be associated activities. It’s like the people who bought houses around McKelvey and then complained about the noise and lights. They are just having fun, let them. Have you forgotten what is like to be young? If they keep the games to Fridays and Saturday nights, that seems reasonable. I lived in the Cuesta area for 10 years and heard the noise from St Francis. Personally, I am not into football, but it made me smile to hear all of those people having fun at a high school football game. It almost made me want to go!
That’s why other schools draw such big crowd. I say let the citizens VOTE! Where do I sign, we need this on the ballot. Let the town decide, not those with the special interests.
Yes, listen to all those people and students having a BLAST on a couple friday nights per year. What an outrage, all those people having such fun on so few nights.
Ha. Ha. It’s not like there is no other problem besides upset neighbors being ignored by the petition. The whole thing is dishonest. Its time to look at why football receives so much funding out of tax dollars. They want to ask for bond money so get serious. Dont waste a million plus on such a dubious frill. There ate 2000 kids at each school. How many attend these events?
Wow. The NIMBYs are even out trying to justify denying basic amenities for high schoolers. These aren’t Google employees. Your arms are going to stink for days after pulling the “schools didn’t have lights for most of the century” lunacy out of your bums.
They’re high schoolers. Stop driving them onto the train tracks and let them at least try to live a well-rounded life before adulthood. You old people don’t even go outside at 11pm.
A lot of mis-information is floating around regarding installing lights at both high schools. First, our two high schools were initially built to serve student bodies of plus/minus 1,000. Today both schools stand at plus/minus 2,000 students. With more students there is more demand for extra-curricular activities ranging from marching band, to the fine arts, to athletic teams that didn’t exist at our schools 30/40 years ago including field hockey, badminton, and lacrosse (boys and girls, varsity and junior varsity teams). Although demand for these activities has increased the space needed to host them has not. Both high schools are land-locked and have limited field space – this is especially acute at LAHS. Given adding more field space is not possible since there is no space left, both schools need to get better utilization out of the space they have – hence the drive for lights. The focus on lights has been the football fields as they are already turf versus natural grass and are lined for the most sports – so although this will definitely allow for night-time football games it will dramatically help winter and spring sports that have to contend with a very narrow window of time available for practices in the Nov – March timeframe and often get rained out when they are on the grass fields that are closed when it rains. A lot of the objections I have seen floating around are not based on facts. It is possible to be excellent in academics and athletics (Stanford and St Francis come to mind as examples). Guidelines can be agreed on to make sure that lights are used in a reasonable way. Money is not really an issue as the MVLA School District has ample funds and is supported by one of the wealthiest business communities (Google, et all in Mountain View) and residential communities (Los Altos Hills) in the country. Although this will affect the neighbors directly around the schools, other communities very similar to ours (Menlo Park, Saratoga, Palo Alto, San Mateo) have all installed lights at schools that are surrounded by residential communities and everyone has survived and many neighbors have found it to be a nice benefit to be able to go across the street and get a jog in at 6:00pm on a December evening after work. Lets not let a small, noisy minority rooted in the past stop an improvement that will benefit the entire community and move us into the current century!
St Francis High School is 1800 students on 25 acres, and yes, they have lights.
But both public high schools are on 40 acre sites, and they have a similar
number of students and have for years now. What consumes space on the sites
is the buildings and PARKING LOTS. Parking is excessive at Mountain View High,
way more than at Los Altos High. In any event, not long ago Mountain View High
had some added new buildings built and they spread them out and only built
one story. Too bad they didn’t go for 2 stories. Obviously, it was bad planning.
Only one tiny building at Los Altos High is 2 stories, but they are gearing up
to ask for another bond measure. If they replace low slung older wings with 2 stories,
that makes for more students and better space utilization.
The fact is the high schools have enough land according to generous California
practices to accommodate 1800 students without any use of 2 story buildings.
40 acres is a LOT. They include use of 10 acres for PARKING and driveways.
In 2010-2011, the enrollments were MV 1816 LA 1660
In 2012-2013, that changed to MV 1851 LA 1728
In 2015-2016, that changed to MV 1871 LA 2044
It’s the height of disconnect to argue that the main purpose of high school is
P.E. What an irresponsible position to argue. Obviously the state feels
the biggest use should be for parking. St Francis uses much less for parking.
Imagine that, they run bus service and encourage car pooling rather than
every student driving.
No, I don’t want to pay $1.2 million to light up the neighborhood at night
just so 1 acre of field can be used at night, which is impractical anyway to use
more than maybe one added hour.
One resident, one vote. We’ll take it off the msg board where the same few posters pretend to be different people.
We all pay taxes, lets put it to a VOTE!
Two story buildings for schools is a great idea, but not original. The Old Mountain View High School on Castro Street was initially two stories.
Please don’t expect me to vote for another bond measure, or more tax dollars, for any local schools if this is how they want to spend our money. If you want to install lights, let those families who support sports pay for them. There have to be other much more important ways to spend taxpayer money. How about on education!
I won’t ask for your vote, just that you have an equal say in the matter, the same as every other voter. I won’t solicit support for it or measures to block it, I will only solicit that the voices of all voters be heard in this matter.
If the MVLA board chooses to proceed, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) will be required, which will likely show the loss of property values for surrounding homes. A loss of even 5% would be more than $100K per home, which brings the total cost to many millions of dollars…way more than the $1.2M cited by proponents. So, if you think $1.2M is ridiculous for night football, How about $10M, $20M? BTW…MVHS and LAHS have held night games at Foothill College for years, a venue which can better handle traffic and parking. One of the main reasons sports booster organizations want games held on the high school campus is to reap a few hundred dollars of revenue at the snack shack.
Lights for what? Not football. Los Altos and Mountain View have two the the worse football programs in the area. See Maxpreps.com. And they have always played under Friday night lights at Foothill College or away games. The only good reason for lights could be for night school: to handle the doubling of students stemming from the City Council’s wholesale addition of more jobs and housing in Mountain View. During the night shift, students could sit in class on the grass and in the stands. Will these newcomers – mostly from other countries – have children who want to beat their brains out playing American tackle football? One hopes those parents might know better. The high school board would never put the question to voters. Why? Because it would raise larger questions including why tackle football – with its lifelong injuries – is still being played in 2017.
HS football should be played under the lights. My school had them and we played a large number of San Jose schools that didn’t. To the man, every opposing player that played on our field enjoyed the experience.
When you hold games later in the day on Friday more parents of the players, band and cheerleaders are able to come. More students from both schools are able to come. More members of the surrounding community will be able to come (as they do for St Francis).
When games are held at night there is a pageantry to it, a specialness to it that isn’t found in broad daylight.
C’mon…put up the lights. Go to a game or two. It’s fun for everyone.
@True Did you read the post you followed? MV and LA play under the lights at Foothill College and when playing an “away” game at night. There is no shortage of lighted stadiums. All games could be played under the lights NOW.
I just looked at the schedule for Los Altos High on Maxpreps. LA is 1-2 with 7 games left. Four of those 7 games are under lights – including an October 13 meeting with Saratoga High at Foothill College. Foothill is located at 12345 El Monte Avenue in Los Altos Hills just west of Highway 280. Check it out. Plenty of lights.
Yep. Read it.
So all of their games are essentially away games. That sucks for the players, the band, the cheerleaders, the parents, and the people that live nearby who might enjoy taking in a game on Friday night (lots of my neighbors go to St. Francis games even though they don’t have kids there).
It would be interesting to see what the transportation costs (and any fees paid to Foothill) are for the “home” games at Foothill vs the cost of some stadium lights. Are there concessions at those games at Foothill? Does Foothill net those proceeds or do the schools? What proceeds might the school earn with night games on their own campus? Can the ROI on the lights be reached in a reasonable amount of time?
And I just looked up Mountain View High on Maxpreps. The Spartans are 1-2. Six of the 7 remaining games are at night under lights. Only the annual meeting with Los Altos is set for an afternoon clash. I will try in a minute to determine why.
….and hey, maybe with a little home field advantage the kids might have a better record.
…really not sure why their record seems so important to you.
So the MV v. LA game is Saturday October 28 at 1:30pm at Los Altos. Of course, many lighted stadiums surely were available that Saturday night. Why they opted for an afternoon game is something a reporter could ask.
Maybe they wanted homecoming to be…ya know….at home?
@ Gary — Thanks for trying to talk sense into True
@ True — The distance between downtown MV and MVHS is 3 miles. The distance from downtown MV and Foothill College is 4 miles. VTA (52 line) runs between downtown MV and Foothill college at night. VTA does not run a bus to MVHS at night. So, which venue is better suited to students? Regarding, St. Francis, they regularly play LaSalle, one of the best football teams in America. Maybe that is why Gary brings up team records.
Ok…show of hands.
Those opposed to lights at our local HS’s….how many of you live within 1mi of one of the campuses?
Let’s call it a NIMBY poll.
I don’t live nearby. Neighbors of the high schools should be concerned. In fact, when the first high school bond measure was proposed 20 years ago, the school bureaucracy assured neighbors there was no plan for lights in the football stadiums.
Concerned? About what? Excess tuba noise at 1/2-time? Really aggressive cheerleaders? Those paper banners that the teams run through before the game?
I didn’t know HS football could be such a threat.
Attend night games elsewhere and see the threats. Even though MV and LA boosters seldom would have reason to cheer and the bands might infrequently be moved to play, the opponents could bring plenty of noise during and after games. Alcohol and other intoxicants are in vehicles parked for blocks. Pedestrians are at unreasonable risk. All of that to glorify to a sport for fools getting dumber with every blow to the head. How about teaching your children more useful activities such as self-defense. They may need the training to get home after attending night high school football games.
Info. There are more lighted games at MVHS scheduled this year. September 29th, October 6th and November 3rd. These are all 7pm games at MVHS that will need the diesel fuel lights each time.
Okay. Let’s see how it goes on those three nights. How many people attend? Where do the vehicles park? How many students are arrested for DUI (it will be officially kept secret)? What noise is let lose on the (neighbor)hood?
This Friday night, April 29, is the first of three experiments with “FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS” this year for the neighbors of Mountain View High School.
Since the team is RANKED in the lower half of the 89 teams in the section (CCS)and plays in the lowly “El Camino division” of its league, not many folks will likely attend.
If Mountain View ever gets good in football (as it was way back when), a game might draw 5,000 onlookers with cars and trucks parked for a half-mile in every direction. But see what you think of the bright lights for a small crowd, for starters. It is your neighborhood.
High School football is getting extremely dangerous. Parents ought not let their children play in this activity. See USA Today’s archive at http://usatodayhss.com/tag/high-school-football-injuries
If the lesson of high school football in the MVLA District is that WIING ISN’T EVERYTHING, the football programs at Mountain View and Los Altos are a success. The two teams played each other on Saturday. Coming in, MV was 3-4 while Los Altos was 1-6. The final score was 35-0. Los Altos won – but winning isn’t everything – so maybe both teams won. Los Altos is now rated the 62nd best team in the 93-member Central Coast Section (counting only schools with football teams) ahead of MV which is now down to No. 67 on Maxpreps (computer rankings across the country). Each team has 2 more games against beatable foes. LA draws Palo Alto next. PA is 2-6. And MV get Lynbrook of San Jose – the lowest ranked team in the CCS at 0-9. But none of this matters. Football has pluses and minuses for participants and onlookers. A few players on weak teams may still get college football scholarships but most high school footballers just take football memories and injuries to college or life. Personally, I favor other physical education for high schoolers. – starting with self-defense and social dancing. But old ways have die-hard supporters and special interest stakeholders. As to Friday night lights at the two high schools, if the neighbors don’t care or don’t speak up, the permanent lights are on the way.