The DeKalb County School District is taking the first steps in making improvements at two of its baseball fields.
The district set aside $2 million in Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax revenue to use towards refurbishing the fields at Redan High School and Druid Hills Middle School.
DeKalb schools say the improvements were not included in the district’s latest Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax program approved by voters in 2016, so the district will use contingency funds to pay for the project.
Board of Education members on Monday approved the allocation. The timeline for the project and details about what the improvements would entail have not been released by the district.
The two fields were chosen in response to the “urgent athletic needs of the students” who attend schools in these clusters, according to a summary of the board agenda item.
Chief Operations Officer D. Benjamin Estill said once the Redan and Druid Hills projects are complete, the fields at Towers, Clarkston, Columbia, McNair, Southwest Dekalb, Lithonia, Martin Luther King Jr. and Stephenson high schools will be improved in that order.
The Redan Raiders’ baseball program has produced several players who have moved onto NCAA or Major League Baseball teams, including Brandon Phillips, Chris Nelson and Domonic Brown. It made history in 2013 when it became the first all-Black team from metro Atlanta to win a state championship in the Georgia High School Association.
Druid Hills Middle School’s field is home to Druid Hill High’s Red Devils baseball team. Support and interest from the community has grown in recent years, Estill said.
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