Fox High School’s track will be replaced after water drainage problems caused cracks and bumps in parts of the track.
Members of the Fox C-6 School District Board of Education voted unanimously March 1 to hire Byrne and Jones Construction of St. Louis to replace the track for $595,975.
The Fox district’s insurance policy does not cover water damage of this sort, but the district will receive a $100,000 reimbursement from its insurance company through an endorsement to cover some of the replacement cost, according to Board of Education documents.
John Stewart, the Fox C-6 School District’s chief financial officer, said the district will cover the remaining $495,975 with money from the district’s capital projects fund.
The work to remove and replace the track is slated for this summer, and the project is expected to be complete by the start of next school year, Stewart said.
Tammy Cardona, assistant superintendent for secondary education, said Fox High’s track team can still use the track for practice, but it cannot host any meets this school year.
She also said the district’s north elementary track meet will be moved to Seckman High School’s track in Imperial.
“I do not know if there were specific home meets scheduled (for the high school team),” Cardona said. “I know that (Fox High athletic director Scott Leuthauser) has scheduled meets to take place at the other schools.”
Cardona said about 80 students typically compete on Fox High’s track team.
A geotechnical report points to groundwater, poor drainage and a high clay content in the soil as the cause of the damage.
“This is an interesting situation,” Stewart said. “As far as we can discern, this has never happened before, and the track has been there since 2012. There have been water issues in this area forever, so why in this last year it heaved and cracked, I don’t know. Are there guarantees it won’t happen again? No.”
In order to replace the track and hopefully remedy the drainage problem, Byrne and Jones said it will remove the surface of the oval track around the athletic field at the Fox High stadium. Then it will mill off the existing asphalt on the track and remove the existing aggregate base to the subgrade.
It will use lime and aggregate to stabilize the subgrade of the track system and then install a 2-inch asphalt base course and a 2-inch asphalt surface course.
Then the course will be covered by a Champion SP black mat and a red structural spray track surface system.
Stewart said there is no guarantee the problem will not happen again.
“There are warranties for one year on part of the work and three or four years on another part of the work,” he said.
The damage was first spotted in March 2021, but the insurance company engineer’s report was not completed until late November, Stewart said.