Ralston Told the Board There Is No Comparable Elementary School. The Campaign in Support of the Project Is Telling Parents Otherwise.

On April 16, 2026, in a public Board of Education meeting, Sacramento City Unified School District’s Assistant Superintendent of Facilities, Chris Ralston, was asked a direct question by Board Member Rhodes: “What other elementary schools in Sac Unified School District have turf at this scale that we’re thinking about?”

His answer:

“At this scale, we don’t have a full scale of only artificial turf available to an elementary school.”

When Rhodes pressed — “So this is not normal for our district in general” — Ralston confirmed it on the record:

“It’s not a normal practice to put an entire athletic multi-use field into the artificial turf space.”

That exchange is in the official Board meeting transcript. The project’s own administrator told the Board that what is being proposed at Crocker/Riverside Elementary has no comparable installation in any SCUSD elementary school, and is not normal practice for the district.

That admission alone deserves the full attention of every parent in this district. The rest of this article walks through what the documentary record actually shows about how Crocker compares to other SCUSD elementaries — and what would be true about the Crocker installation if it goes in as proposed.

The closest in-district comparison: William Land Elementary

In public discussions, William Land Elementary has been described as the most directly comparable SCUSD school to Crocker — the only elementary school denser than Crocker, and a school that has had synthetic turf for about a decade.

The district’s own Facility Condition Assessment for William Land tells a different story.

The EMG Facility Condition Assessment for William Land Elementary School, prepared for SCUSD in June 2020, describes — line by line — every component on the William Land campus, with quantities, materials, and conditions. The synthetic turf appears in Appendix D, the Component Condition Report, in the Site section.

Here is what the document records, verbatim:

G2047 — Site — Fair — Play Surfaces, Artificial Turf, 1/2″ Pile, 5/16″ Pad — 5,500 SF

That is the entire William Land synthetic turf installation, by the district’s own facility assessment.

Five thousand five hundred square feet. Half-inch pile. Five-sixteenths-inch pad. Categorized under “G2047 — Play Surfaces” alongside wood chips, asphalt playground surfacing, and basketball backstops.

This is a small play surface — about half the area of a basketball court — with very short fibers and a thin pad, sitting in the same equipment category as wood-chip play areas and metal sports apparatus. It is not, by any standard meaning of the term, a synthetic athletic field.

Ralston told the Board it was twice as large as it actually is

There is a documented inconsistency between what the EMG document records and what Ralston told the Board on April 16, and it is worth its own section.

In answering Rhodes’s question about scale comparability, Ralston told the Board that William Land’s synthetic surface is “about 10,000 square feet.”

The district’s own EMG Facility Condition Assessment lists it at 5,500 square feet. Independent measurement via Google Earth polygon also confirms 5,500 square feet. Two independent sources converge on the same number.

Ralston’s number to the Board, in answer to a Board member’s direct question about scale, overstates William Land’s installation by roughly 80%.

This is not a small detail. The Board was being asked to evaluate whether Crocker’s installation is comparable to anything else in the district. The project administrator’s response inflated the closest in-district comparator by a factor that effectively cut the size gap in half. Even with that inflation working in his favor, his answer to Rhodes was still that no SCUSD elementary has anything at Crocker’s scale.

The actual ratio is worse than what he told the Board. Crocker would not be approximately 4.5 times larger than the closest in-district comparator. It would be approximately 5 times larger.

What’s actually being proposed at Crocker

The Crocker proposal is documented in the FieldTurf pricing proposal dated March 25, 2026, attached to Lease Amendment #01 in the April 16, 2026 SCUSD Board of Education agenda packet. The contract specifies:

Vertex Prime is FieldTurf’s full athletic-field system — the product line FieldTurf markets and installs at high schools, college stadiums, and professional sports facilities. It is built around an athletic-grade fiber, a Brock shock-attenuation pad, and an infill loading designed for full athletic use.

This is a different product, in a different category, at a different scale, for a different use than what currently exists at any other SCUSD elementary school.

Twenty-nine tons of olive pits

The infill quantity deserves to sit on the page by itself. The arithmetic comes directly from the executed contract.

The FieldTurf pricing proposal specifies, verbatim:

“Infill Weight: 5.5 lbs silica sand & 2.1 lbs PureSelect Olive per sq.ft.”

27,801 square feet × 2.1 pounds per square foot = 58,382 pounds of olive-pit infill.

That is 29 tons of crushed olive pits being installed at an elementary school playground.

For comparison: a fully loaded school bus weighs approximately 12 tons. The proposed olive-pit infill at Crocker weighs more than two fully loaded school buses.

Combined with the 5.5 lbs/SF silica sand layer specified in the same contract line, the total granular infill loading at Crocker is approximately 106 tons of crushed material packed into a single 27,801 SF surface — silica sand and crushed olive pits, layered, between the synthetic turf fibers and the shock pad.

This material has not been independently studied for elementary-aged children. It was not the infill evaluated in the OEHHA synthetic turf study, which examined crumb rubber. It is not subject to a published government risk assessment specific to elementary school populations. The only health credential FieldTurf cites for its PureSelect product is compliance with the EN-71-3 European Toy Testing standard for chemical migration — a standard designed for children’s toys, not for hours of daily exposure on a playing surface in Sacramento heat.

The 5,500 SF synthetic surface at William Land has no infill specification recorded in the EMG document. A half-inch-pile play surface with a 5/16″ pad does not carry the kind of granular infill loading an athletic-grade Vertex Prime system requires. The William Land surface is not in the product category that uses 100+ tons of granular infill, and never has been.

The other SCUSD elementaries

When the district lists schools that already have “synthetic turf” — Nicholas, Bowling Green, Hollywood Park, Oak Ridge, and César Chávez are the names that have appeared alongside William Land — the picture is the same as William Land. None of these elementary schools has a synthetic athletic playing field. What they have are sections of synthetic turf used for various supplemental purposes: a small play patch between play structures, a section in a hardcourt area, decorative ground cover near a kindergarten yard, a perimeter strip around a play apparatus.

These are not playable fields. They are the same product category that the EMG document records at William Land: small synthetic surfaces, integrated into the broader campus play environment, used to supplement other surfaces — not to replace a playing field.

If the question is “how many SCUSD elementary schools have a synthetic turf playing field installed at the scale being proposed for Crocker?” — the question Rhodes actually asked Ralston on April 16 — the documented answer is zero.

The numbers, side by side

Crocker’s proposed installation is approximately 5 times larger than William Land’s existing installation. It uses a different product line. It carries a granular organic infill loading that William Land’s surface does not. It is categorized differently in the same district’s own assessment framework.

What scale changes: the GMAX testing obligation

A full synthetic athletic field carries operational obligations that a 5,500 SF decorative play patch does not. The most consequential of these is GMAX testing.

GMAX is a numerical measurement of how much shock an athletic playing surface absorbs. It is the standard test for synthetic turf athletic fields, governed by ASTM F1936. A higher GMAX number means a harder surface, and more impact transmitted to a child who falls on it. ASTM specifies a maximum of 200 GMAX, above which a field is considered out of compliance and should be taken out of use until remediated.

Ralston confirmed this obligation in writing. On March 9, 2026, in an email to PTO President Chloe Quail Schmidt, he wrote:

“All artificial fields do G-Max testing for concussion protocols.”

He confirmed in the same exchange that synthetic fields are “tested yearly to make sure we are always in compliance.”

There is, however, a problem. The FieldTurf pricing proposal in the Board agenda packet itemizes exactly what testing is being purchased:

GMAX TESTING — $1,500

That line item, on its own line in the contract, is followed by a single specification: “GMAX testing at substantial completion.”

The contract pays for one GMAX test, performed once, at the time the field is finished being installed. It does not pay for the annual testing program Ralston told the PTO President was standard practice. There is no annual GMAX testing program funded in this contract. There is no documented annual testing budget in any of the project records released under the Public Records Act so far.

What Ralston told the PTO President in writing was that fields are “tested yearly to make sure we are always in compliance.” What the contract actually purchases is one test, performed once, at the start of the field’s life — the moment when GMAX values are guaranteed to be lowest, before infill compaction, before fiber wear, before Sacramento heat cycling.

Synthetic turf does not stay constant over time. As infill compacts and migrates with use, the surface hardens. A field that tested at 130 GMAX when newly installed can climb above 200 within a few years if maintenance is inadequate. Fields that exceed 200 GMAX have been associated with concussion risk increases. This is precisely why annual testing exists. It is precisely what the contract is not paying for.

What this means for parents

If your kindergartener falls on the field at Crocker in 2030 and is injured by a surface that has hardened beyond ASTM compliance thresholds, the school will need to produce documentation that GMAX testing was performed and that the surface was within compliance at the time. The contract Crocker is signing pays for that test once — at the start of the field’s life, when compliance is guaranteed. It does not pay for the annual testing the project administrator told PTO leadership was standard practice. That obligation does not exist at any other SCUSD elementary school. The district has not produced a written annual testing plan, a remediation protocol, or a maintenance budget for this installation in any record released to the public so far.

That is the operational profile being approved when the Board approves this contract.

What FieldTurf is — and is not — taking responsibility for

The same pricing proposal that specifies the infill loading also includes an explicit liability disclaimer that deserves quoting in full. Under “Price Does Not Include,” the proposal states:

“The base upon which the FieldTurf artificial turf surface will be placed. FieldTurf shall not be responsible for the planarity, stability, porosity, nor the approval of the base upon which the FieldTurf surface will be installed, the drainage system, nor any construction or modification of existing installations around the fields.”

In plain English: the company installing 29 tons of olive pits and a synthetic carpet on top of a Sacramento elementary school is contractually disclaiming responsibility for whether the ground underneath drains, whether it stays flat, or whether it stays stable.

The 8-year warranty offered with the contract is also worth noting. It is described in the proposal as “an 8-year 3rd party pre-paid insured warranty on the FieldTurf artificial grass surface.” It is not a FieldTurf warranty. It is a warranty issued by a third-party insurer, prepaid by the customer. This warranty structure is the product of FieldTurf’s $50 million federal class-action settlement in December 2024, in which more than 1,200 school districts and municipalities alleged FieldTurf had sold defective fields and failed to honor its own warranties. Third-party insured warranties exist because FieldTurf’s own warranties had become a liability.

The category Crocker would actually be entering

If the Crocker installation goes in as proposed, the school would become:

• The first SCUSD elementary school with a full-scale synthetic athletic field.
• The first SCUSD elementary site that requires GMAX testing as part of its operational protocol — with the contract paying for one test at substantial completion and no documented funding source for the annual testing the project administrator committed to in writing.
• The first SCUSD elementary site where surface hardness compliance is a Board-level operational concern.
• The first SCUSD elementary installation of olive-pit infill at any scale. William Land’s 5,500 SF surface predates this material entirely, with no infill specification recorded in the EMG document.
• The first SCUSD elementary site to receive 29 tons of granular organic infill — and approximately 106 tons of total granular infill — at a single location.

That is not joining other elementaries that have made the same choice. That is creating a new category of facility that does not currently exist in the SCUSD elementary system.

It is also moving in the opposite direction of the largest school district in California. On November 18, 2025, the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education unanimously voted to prohibit new artificial turf installations at all early education, elementary, and middle schools in the district — for the same scale, exposure, and pediatric vulnerability reasons that apply at Crocker. That vote happened less than four months before SCUSD signed its contract for this project.

The closest in-district comparator that actually compares

The closest SCUSD installation that is comparable to what is proposed at Crocker is the high-school synthetic athletic field — Rosemont, JFK. Those are full-scale athletic synthetic surfaces. They are also at high schools. A high school athletic field is not a meaningful comparator for an elementary school playing surface, for several reasons:

• High school students are not the same population as elementary students. They are taller, heavier, less proximate to the surface, and their developmental and respiratory profiles are not the same as a five-year-old’s.
• High school athletic fields are scheduled-use surfaces — varsity practice, JV practice, PE classes — typically managed with cooldowns, water breaks, and protocols. An elementary school field is the recess surface for hundreds of children twice a day, with no scheduled rotation.
• High school athletic fields are generally not the only outdoor surface on campus. Crocker has one field. When it is offline for GMAX remediation or heat closure, there is nowhere else for the children to go.

The record

The district’s own Facility Condition Assessment for William Land Elementary records the synthetic turf there as 5,500 square feet of half-inch pile play surface — a category of installation that is not the same product, not the same scale, and not the same use as the 27,801 square foot FieldTurf Vertex Prime athletic system being proposed at Crocker.

The other SCUSD elementaries that have been described as comparable — Nicholas, Bowling Green, Hollywood Park, Oak Ridge, and César Chávez — all have sections of synthetic surface used for supplemental purposes. None has a synthetic athletic playing field.

The Crocker installation would be approximately 5 times the size of the William Land installation, in a different product class, with 29 tons of olive-pit infill (and approximately 106 tons of total granular infill) that William Land’s surface does not carry, requiring GMAX testing that William Land’s surface does not require — and with the contract funding only one GMAX test at completion, not the annual testing the project administrator told PTO leadership was standard practice.

The project administrator told the Board on April 16, 2026 that this is “not a normal practice” for the district. He overstated the closest in-district comparator by 80% in answering a Board member’s direct question about scale. Even with that overstatement, his honest answer to Rhodes was that there is no comparable elementary school in the SCUSD system.

The documents themselves tell the story. The contract specifies the product. The Facility Condition Assessment specifies what already exists. The Board transcript records what the project administrator said when asked.

The numbers do not match. The scale does not match. The product does not match. The operational obligations do not match.

What is being proposed at Crocker is not what already exists anywhere else in this district.