Students at Eagle Rock Junior/Senior High School (ERHS) have raised concerns about a new Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) construction project to replace their natural grass athletic field with artificial turf. According to the LAUSD, this plan was made in response to the track and field facilities no longer meeting competition standards.
LAUSD spokesperson Samuel C. Gilstrap said the remodel will be completed in the next year.
“Construction at Eagle Rock High School began in late August 2026 and is expected to be completed in Fall 2027,” Gilstrap said.
ERHS junior Lio Davis said students are concerned by the potential impacts of certain artificial turf options.
“[LAUSD] still don’t know what kind of turf they’re going to be putting in, which is a big concern of ours, because there’s different kinds of turf that are more harmful than others,” Davis said.
ERHS senior Kate Calibugar said the extreme heat and potentially harmful chemical runoff on artificial turf fields have contributed to her stance against the artificial turf.
“I don’t want [turf] because it can reach up to 170 degrees, which can give people burns,” Calibugar said. “[Turf] also has a lot of harmful chemicals that are going to be in the water that runs off of the turf, because they need to continuously water it to cool it down.”
ERHS senior and track and cross country athlete Eluisa Schulitz said athletes at the school are worried about the injuries and discomfort that may come with an artificial turf field.
“A lot of the schools that we go to have synthetic tracks and fields and we have to use the turf for warming up. It’s itchy, it’s really hot and there’s these little pebbles in it that stick everywhere and injure you when you’re just sitting on them,” Schulitz said.
Schulitz said she has heard other students voice their own reservations.
“A lot of the cheer and drill athletes express concerns about how turf has given them rashes, cuts and injuries that don’t happen on grass,” Schulitz said.
Schulitz said she created a petition to garner support from the community about changing the remodel plan to replace the field with natural grass rather than artificial turf.
“Our goals were to redo the field, install a nice natural grass field and maintain that field,” Schulitz said. “There was a lot of support for having a natural grass field and not an artificial turf field […] [I heard] a lot of comments from people who I didn’t know would want to speak on it.” Schulitz said.
Davis said a major source of unease for the community comes from the project planning to install artificial turf despite LAUSD having banned new turf installations for elementary and middle schools in 2025.
“LAUSD has banned new turf in elementary and middle schools across the district, and we are a middle school in addition to a high school,” Davis said.
According to Gilstrap, projects approved before the 2025 ban are allowed to continue as planned, while the LAUSD further investigates the impacts of artificial turf.
“Existing, previously approved high school projects — including the athletic-field project at Eagle Rock High School, approved by the Board in July 2023 — are proceeding as planned while that broader review continues,” Gilstrap said.
Schulitz said when students brought up concerns at community meetings about the environmental impacts of turf, representatives of the district referred them to an LAUSD turf study that has yet to come out. Schulitz said LAUSD community affairs liaison Ivonne Ortega Ramirez told her the district’s turf study would be released in September, but she received conflicting information from LAUSD board member Karla Griego.
“[Griego] said the turf study is going to be coming out in November, but Ivonne told me it was going to come out in two weeks,” said Schulitz.
Schulitz said students have faced roadblocks while attempting to share their opinions on the project and get involved in the next steps of the decision-making process.
Calibugar said she wished the district would show more interest in the opinions of their students and the wider community about projects like these before making decisions.
“I wish [LAUSD was] listening to us, especially about the things that we really do want to see on our campuses […] and putting [funding] into things students themselves have asked for,” Calibugar said.
Davis said he is frustrated Griego has not brought students’ desire to replace the field with natural grass to the board for consideration.
“Realistically, the way for our contract to be modified would be for [Griego] to bring it up to the rest of the school board,” Davis said.
Schulitz said Griego has stated an interest in a future with no new artificial turf installations within LAUSD.
“[Griego] said that she wants to push for legislation that would state that LAUSD can’t install artificial turf anymore, but that we have to wait for the turf study to be done,” Schulitz said.
Davis said he is using this project to encourage wider regulations against artificial turf in the LAUSD.
“Even if we’re not able to win grass at our school, we’re working towards grass being the only real option across the entire district,” Davis said. “[We want] more money allocated towards maintaining that grass, because we firmly believe that every student should get to play on real grass.”
Contact Sadie Maguire at smaguire@oxy.edu
