For NPS, it's not just a new football stadium, not even close

Note from Clay: As you may know, I continue to write a Sunday column for The Norman Transcript. Almost all of those are fine columns for this space, too. Still, this one is different, me trying to convince Norman voters to approve a $353.9 million Norman Public Schools bond proposal. Anyway, here it is. I wrote it, I think, as only as I can write it. Hope you’re with me on the cause. Also, hope you enjoy the writing, because that’s sort of the point here. Enjoy.

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The photo I took Saturday night because I had to be sure what I was writing about Norman High’s stadium was correct.

Here’s the deal When Norman Public Schools’ two-part $353.9 million bond issue comes up for election in nine days, I suggest you vote for it.

Not because NPS has me in its pocket. Not because the district’s incapable of mistakes and not because, being a sports guy, I blindly jump on board for anything enhancing existing venues or creating new ones.

To prove it, let’s start with three things about the proposal I don’t care for.

One, as it says in the fourth paragraph of the Nov. 28 press release announcing itself, “Projects in the bond proposal were identified through demographic studies, facility assessments and input from parents, teachers, staff and community stakeholders.”

Because among the words you can drive a truck through in this world is “stakeholders,” because one person’s stakeholders may not be another’s. 

Indeed, a politician’s idea of public education stakeholders may include nobody with any history in public education, which might make sense to some people, though I can’t imagine why.

The point, though, is after 26 years of sportswriting in this town, never working with or for NPS, but adjacent to it, covering its athletic programs, coaches and players, I trust the NPS to perform its rightful due diligence right down to the unfortunately named “stakeholders” it brings into the process.

Two other things I don’t like?

Referring to Harve Collins Field, Norman High’s football and track stadium, as “Harve Collins Stadium,” though the district did that, too, in the second paragraph of that same press release even though it plainly says “Harve Collins Field” above the stadium’s entrance.

I mean, come on.

It was probably called “Field" in the first place as reference to its being a track and field facility, not just a football stadium, but that hardly matters. What matters is getting history right and realizing its current signage still says “Field."

Three, on the list of improvements and additions to take place at Norman North is this bullet point item, straight from the presentation made to the school board that unanimously approved the proposal:

“New competition stadium (including new turf and track surface)”

I’m fine with North getting its stadium. If not entirely necessary, it’s entirely overdue, especially in a place like Norman where it ought to be built not to keep up with the Edmonds and Moores but because 27 years after North's doors opened it’s just something North ought to have. Not to mention, it will make future campus Crosstown Clashes thrilling to view and, for me, hopefully, to cover.

What can’t be tolerated is the term “turf” when it means the exact opposite — an artificial surface — because “turf" is natural grass, just ask any thoroughbred owner, trainer, groom or bettor. 

But those stickler-for-the-language issues aside, I have none with the proposal its ownself, because if you can’t invest in the kids in your community, kindergarten through their senior year of high school, in whom can you possibly invest?

North’s football stadium’s bound to get much of the attention, and why not, it’s price tag is $24.085 million, but it’s just a piece of the proposal and not the most expensive.

A high school aviation academy  ($32.745 million) is on the docket, as is another performing arts auditorium ($18.42 million), as is a new FFA facility ($5 million), as is a huge investment in esports (almost $27.8 million between both high schools) that’s crazy cutting edge and cool and, just maybe, will make heroes of students whose names we’d never otherwise know.

Beyond all that, every school in the district’s due upgrades, from a $446,000 investment in Reagan Elementary to a $12.1 million investment in Monroe Elementary.

Look, if any type of election deserves to be a universal walkover, it’s public education bond issues, because what else do you think is the backbone of any community’s present and future no matter how loud the voices may be opposing it?

And still this is not that.

Well, it is, but this one in particular is thoughtful, broad, forward thinking and universal.

And though I’d wish they call them something else, they must have found the right stakeholders, because this is the way you make a great thing better, going big and bold and leaving nobody out.