‘Friday Night Lights’ project takes unexpected turn

Peninsula High School has had a very clear, consistent goal for upcoming football seasons: stadium lights for night football games. With the yearlong efforts to raise funds for lights, the Steering Committee in charge of this project, had its plans terminated with the District’s statement disapproving of the project and deeming all funds invalid.

The Steering Committee filed a petition for Writ of Mandate against the District and Board of Education on Jan. 31. Their claims were “failure to engage in and complete the process they represented and promised they would engage in to determine the viability of installing lights at Peninsula High School.”

The unexpected cancellation of this much-anticipated addition to Peninsula ’s campus raised eyebrows both students and faculty alike.

“When I found out that the lights were cancelled, I felt like I wasted a lot of time, effort and money,” sophomore songleader Caitlyn Takeda said. “As a song team, we raised generous funds for the project and all of a sudden, these funds didn’t matter anymore.”

Not only were students who were involved become affected, but also teachers and coaches.

“It’s sad the board couldn’t follow through with their promise of moving forward…when the Friday Nights Lights Committee accumulated the agreed amount of money to do so,” freshman football coach Douglas Esparza said.

The committee’s new goal is to regain the value of work, effort and service provided by law firms and architectural consultants and the expenses of out-of-pocket capital and geotechnical investigation services. Nearly $200,000 is sought against the District.

“Right now we need to have the time to share this with the Board of Education and with our legal counsel about what it all means,” Superintendent Walker Williams told the Palos Verdes News.

The committee claimed that the District and other board members initially fully supported the project. Also, the Board advised the committee and prepared them for city council meetings to insure that they would present the case strongly.

According to the Steering Committee, the Board supposedly promised that the project could move forward if the committee could raise at least $250,000 by July 10, 2011.

The committee’s complaint, however, also suggests that the district decided to stop supporting the lights project after community members threatened to pull their support away from upcoming parcel tax elections.

The committee still raised more than the decided $250,000 shown on bank statements on July 6, 11 and 14.

The District claimed that the deadline was never met, and that “the district ‘must graciously decline’ any further efforts on the project.”

”It feels like the Friday Night Lights Project never had a chance,” said Esparza. “[It’s] too bad. The school and community could have really benefited from the project.”