School Building Committee votes to add to and renovate the LHS field house

When the school day ends and clubs and sports teams gather for meetings and games, Lexington High School’s track and field team of over 240 students crowd the campus’ field house for practice.

The dome near the school’s Worthen Road entrance, which many residents say looks like a UFO, was originally built in 1965 to accommodate up to 37 students. Almost 60 years later, the facility is still used daily for school events, sports teams, and LABBB Collaborative programs, the town’s special needs education service. But, it no longer meets the school’s needs. 

“The school has grown bigger, the track team has grown bigger, and the community has grown bigger,” Robert Atkins, Lexington resident, said. “For all of those reasons there is a need for the facility to grow bigger.”

Lexington has been working for years to devise a plan to update its high school, including the property’s field house. On Tuesday, the town’s School Building Committee decided which building design to move into the schematic design phase of planning. During that meeting, the SBC also unanimously voted to add to and renovate Lexington High School’s field house. 

SMMA, the architecture firm managing the LHS building project, estimated additions and renovations to the field house will cost about $41 million. The Massachusetts School Building Authority does not consider the cost of updating the field house when deciding how much funding it will contribute to the high school building project — the town is responsible for the cost of updating the field house.

Many attendees of Tuesday’s meeting were not in support of the decision to add to and renovate the field house. Residents who commented on the decision argued the town should have voted to reserve land on the high school’s property to build a new field house because the school needs a new, larger facility, and renovating and adding to the field house will be disruptive to students. 

“With the rest of the high school, you’ve said we’re going to build the best with the least disruptions, however when it comes to the field house what you’ve decided is we’re going to have the one with the biggest disruption and minimal improvement,” Dawn McKenna, Lexington resident, said during the SBC’s Tuesday meeting. “I think that’s going to affect votes on the debt exclusion which I want to pass.”

“I’m disappointed in the choice to not save space and continue to explore a new larger field house,” Steve McKenna, coach of Lexington High School’s track and field team, said during that meeting. “The space is inadequate and there is a need for additional space.”

The current field house is 34,000 square feet, and includes a 146 meter banked track with four oval lanes and six straightaway lanes, a regulation sized basketball court, and a batting cage. 

“Our practices are already hard enough considering we have so many people on our indoor track team,” Simon Tandeih, a junior on the school’s track team, said. “Having to deal with 200 people in itself is already a problem, on top of that we have basketballs rolling on to the track and people walking in front of you while you’re running, it’s dangerous.”

To mitigate overcrowding, LHS’s track and field team has split up practicing times, held practices at the New Balance Track in Brighton, and practiced outdoors. The facility’s track does not meet the current competing standards which states that tracks must be 200 meters with six oval lanes and eight straightaway lanes. 

The small confines of the facility pose a challenge when the team is practicing different events at the same time. The field house has a 30-foot throwing area but many shot put athletes can put over 50 feet. As a result, shots frequently land on the track while other athletes are running. McKenna told LexObserver that LHS’s track and field coach, Halston Taylor, attributes many athletes’ injuries to the poor condition of the field house’s track. 

“He pointed out that one of the reasons that we’re seeing such a high injury rate with stress fractures is because of the narrow turn radius of the track,” McKenna said.

Residents will vote on the town’s plan for the LHS building project and updating the field house in the same debt exclusion vote in December 2025.

If voters support passing that debt exclusion and the project is approved, the current field house would be offline for about two years. Renovations to the field house would start about six months to a year after construction of the new high school building begins. The track and field team will continue to compete at off-site facilities during construction.