The Santa Ana Unified School District paid for the repair of the blacktop and the backfield at the start of the school year.   For the blacktop, workers patched up holes with asphalt, which had worsened increasingly during last year.  They patched up the concrete four weeks before school and worked on the grass two weeks before school started.  The backfield had been reseeded. 

Lead Custodian Mr. Giovanni Aguilar helped coordinate the fixes of the holes on the concrete and grass.  The backfield had been closed the grass when school began while the reseeded grass regrew. 

“The grass looks way better and is way safer without patches,” said eighth-grader Diogo Cortes.

The blacktop needed to get repaired because it had several potholes, and the blacktop also needed to get restriped where the paint had been fading.  To patch up the blacktop, the old asphalt needed to be removed.  Then, the new asphalt was laid to patch the holes.  This occured while school was not in session because the asphalt is poured after it is heated to over 350 degrees.   Now with the smoother surface, students playing on the blacktop will be less likely to injure themselves during P.E. or lunch.

Kevin Morales, eighth grade, said,  “This new blacktop looks amazing from what it looked like before.”

The repairs on the blacktop cost about $15,000.  According to Aguilar, resurfacing the entire blacktop will cost over $100,000 but may be necessary at some point.  

Still, the improvements have been noticed.  “Both the grass and the blacktop are a better improvement from last year,” said eighth-grader Joseph Nieves.

The benefits of fixing the blacktop is that it will have safer ground to run in and to not trip over any type of cracks or holes.  The benefits for fixing the grass is that there are no holes to trip on and fuller grass is softer when students fall.