Former trustee Gene Parks Jr. stands between two new basketball hoops that he worked nearly six years to attain for Wallace Elementary School. Photo by Catherine Stachowiak
The new basketball courts at the Wallace Elementary School campus would have been older by now, if not for COVID disrupting the construction process, according the former Kernville Union School District board trustee Gene Parks Jr. and his wife Tiffany Parks who is the new vice principal at Wallace Middle School.
“It was so hard to make this happen. It would have cost $10,000 to build this. But then COVID hit. The concrete was $80 a yard and it turned into $200 a yard. So then funding became a little bit different. But we finally made it happen.” said Gene Parks Jr.
Tiffany Parks agreed saying, “We did research six years ago looking at schools that were the same size as ours, in Kern County. We actually called the schools. We found out what their student population was. And then we told them that we were doing research with some of our students. We used my Alt Ed students to help us with the research. We asked them (the schools) what their student population was and how many basketball hoops they have on their campus. They all had four, five, six, eight, 10 hoops. None of them even have two hoops. We were even driving through Caliente one day, and the little school over there had eight. We did have one portable one. It was awful.”
Tiffany Parks said that the kids put out a petition asking students and teachers if they wanted the basketball courts and had to present it before the board, learning a lesson about working for such a project and presenting it. The board agreed to the project back in 2019. The project would have been done by the summer of 2020, but COVID changed the life of the project as well as the cost
The debate among the board was whether the district was willing to give up having some of the grassy area on campus in order to make room for the basketball courts? Happily the campus still ended up having grass, after all, despite the addition of the cement for the courts.
Back then Gene and Tiffany Parks both felt there weren’t enough activities on campus with limited members playing. Currently, with the addition of the courts to the campus, the students can have numbers of kids playing basketball but students can also still play soccer and catch. Students are busier with basketball giving them more to do.
“It helped at recess tremendously. We actually saw a drop in the number of referrals at recess because they (students) didn’t want to be out here and fighting and getting into trouble. They just wanted to be out here and playing a game,” said Tiffany Parks who not long ago worked on the same campus.
Gene Parks said, “My friends at Rivernook paid $4000 for those two hoops. They donated it. So that’s what actually ended up making all of it finally push.”
The couple said they would still like to see a picnic bench and a drinking fountain.
The project involved a lot of red tape but the Parks think it was well worth their time and are both thankful. The district still plans to put three tetherball courts on campus as part of the project it approved.
