A determined mother received an award last week for convincing town officials and the school district to make major improvements to an athletic field at Vista Grande Elementary School in Danville.
Vista Grande presented Caroline White – a Danville mother of three – the “Whatever It Takes” award for spending six years of her life working to get improvements at its sports field. She was able to convince the town and the school district to spend $400,000 each to make extensive improvements to the field at Vista Grande, district spokesman Terry Koehne said.
“It’s been in bad shape for a long time,” White said. “There wasn’t enough money set aside for this.”
“These poor kids,” she added. “They just needed a new field. Physical fitness is very important – there are so many issues with obesity. The kids need to have physical fitness in their life. It’s hard for the physical education teacher to do his job correctly (without having the proper field to use).”
As a result of White’s efforts, the district approved construction earlier this month to build a new field in the summer of 2007. It will have two new soccer fields, a track, two softball diamonds and a T-ball diamond.
The project already is budgeted to cost $800,000 and may balloon to $900,000, White said.
“It’s going to be great,” she said. “It’s going to have everything the kids need.”
White said she started working on the project six years ago when her son attended Vista Grande.
“It’s a project that I’ve been working on for a long time,” she said. “It was brought to my attention that Vista Grande was one of only two schools that didn’t have park status.”
Park status means the school fields are maintained by the Town of Danville and the city of San Ramon. Schools have exclusive use of their fields during class hours, but the community can use them when classes are over, said Koehne.
The other school in Danville without park status was Greenbrook Elementary, White said, but now all the schools have it.
When White realized the field was in bad shape, she was surprised.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said.
She began researching and raising money to finance the project. With the help of San Ramon Valley Girls Athletic League, the local PTA and Mustang Soccer, her group raised $100,000.
White approached Danville and the school district several times about her idea. The town offered to pay half of the cost for the field. But the district, due to the financial obligations with other projects, was not able to finance the other half, said Koehne.
White said she was about to give up.
“It was frustrating,” she said. But she said members of the local parent teachers association, her husband and Marcia Somers, the Danville community services director, wanted her to continue her efforts. “You’ve gotta have faith in the system,” she said.
White said she approached the school board and convinced the district to place the field project at the top of its agenda.
“It’s something that we’ve always wanted to do,” Koehne said. “A lot of the Measure A projects are under way, and the district was ready to give more time and consideration; and the level of community support has risen considerably, too. It’s a great way for us to use our school resources to benefit the community.”
“It’s a lesson of perseverance,” noted White.
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