Herbert H. Lehman HS Football Field Petition

We are a community of student-athletes, parents, coaches, school staff and alumni and supporters of educational rights who are seeking your assistance in the development of a regulation size football and athletic field on behalf of Herbert H. Lehman High School located at 3000 East Tremont Avenue Bronx, New York 10461.

The existing field can not accommodate regulation high school football games because it’s 20 yards short of a standard football field. To no avail, the Lehman High School community exhausted multiple attempts to secure additional real estate at our existing location for over three decades. Furthermore, other New York City High Schools are scheduled for new athletic fields with our same problems and have been accommodated throughout the years while we patiently waited our turn. A budget was recently approved to refurbish Lehman’s existing field, without addressing the fact that the new field will still leave countless student athletes without a home field and a pocket full of unnecessary expenses.

We’re delighted that it is Lehman’s turn for a new field and a construction company Perkan Concrete Corp has begun renovating the field for use in September 2011. However, the problem is that the construction company is renovating the field with the exact same yardage of the old field (80 yards). This is an expensive way (5 million dollars) to resurface it and make it an inadequate athletic field. Under the current scenario Lehman High School would still be the only school in the Bronx without a playing field for varsity and junior varsity home football games as well as lacrosse and soccer.

The architect company Blumberg and Butter, PC. Mrs. Butter did the original design and did not make the field regulation because they believed the Army Corp of Engineers owned land around Lehman’s field. However, we obtained a letter from the Army Corp of Engineers that states they own no land where Lehman is located. Furthermore if they did we believe they would allow us to use their land in order to build a field for the kids if asked. There are several options if people are willing to agree that having a football field will keep the community youth active, engaged in positive activities, and out of negative ones. Thus, we can help produce positive results for our youths with the appropriate field in our neighborhood.