School, league parents to take dispute to HISD

From: Houston Chronicle, TX - 07 Jan 2003

Storm damage spurs another brawl over fields
By RAD SALLEE and RACHEL GRAVES

Damage from a recent storm has prompted the latest bench-clearing brawl in an extra-inning game between parents from T.H. Rogers School and two baseball leagues.

Both sides in the dispute, which has been smoldering for about five years, will address the Houston Independent School District board Thursday as they wrangle over access to a prime stretch of real estate adjoining the school.

No one is eyeing the 7.9-acre complex near the Galleria for a shopping mall or condominium complex, though. Instead, the two groups of parents are vying for what they think is best for their children.

The open land adjoining Rogers, at 5840 San Felipe, is sliced into four baseball diamonds used by the Post Oak Little League and Post Oak PONY League, which have leased the field for two decades.

Combined, the two leagues dominate the playground, leaving little space for the gifted, deaf and handicapped children bused in from all over the school district to attend Rogers.

High winds in a late December storm felled poles holding up the net on one of the baseball fields. Repairs are under way, but the Rogers parents say the incident illustrates their concerns about who is responsible for making sure the fields are safe.

"The collapse of these poles raises in our minds: Who's been assuring the quality of the work?" said Joe Higgs, father of two Rogers students. "Has anybody reviewed this?"

Jeff Webb, a board member of both baseball leagues, said the work is safe. "You just had some tremendous winds from that storm," he said. "It was taken care of."

The leagues, which lease the land from HISD, pay for maintenance and capital improvements of the fields.

Rogers parents are pressuring HISD not to renew their lease, which expires in December. They say the school needs space for a soccer field, track and practice facilities for its Special Olympics team. They have organized a group called Fields for All to push the baseball groups to accommodate their wishes by reconfiguring the fields or leaving altogether.

"As far as I can tell, Little League is not essential to the education process," said Dennis Hansen, whose 16-year-old daughter is in special education at Rogers.

The Little League group retaliates on its Web site: "When they say `Fields For All' they actually mean `No Fields For Y'all.' "

Webb contends that instead of seeking compromise, the Rogers parents are trying to force the baseball leagues to tear up their baseball diamonds.

"If we have to demolish the fields, we're out of business," he said.

The baseball leagues have poured more than $1 million into the facilities during the past two decades and spend $60,000 a year to maintain them, he said.

HISD Superintendent Kaye Stripling, the likely umpire in the fight, declined to be interviewed for this story.

"I believe there is a workable solution for Rogers, and I have every intention of making a well-informed, reasoned recommendation to the board based on discussions with all concerned parties -- but this will take some time," she wrote in a letter to the editor published in the Houston Chronicle last month.

Rogers is a combined elementary and middle school with 737 students. About a third are deaf or have physical or mental disabilities. Students are a mix of ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds, whereas the baseball leagues serve boys from the largely affluent neighborhoods around the school. Many of the children, Fields for All said, attend private schools.

Webb said where the players go to school should make no difference in the dispute.

"These people may or may not have more money than you or I, but this is a neighborhood," he said. "They bring their whole families. ... It is as wholesome an experience as you will ever see, and it would be tragic to see that go away."

Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle