injuries have continued. Not only are you putting their bodies in danger, you are also putting their futures at risk because their ability to perform is affected. It is unfair for the players that have worked so hard to have their opportunities for college scholarship potentially affected due to MCPS not choosing to do the right thing here.

From Molly Wichenbach public comment.

PUBLIC COMMENTS
BEFORE THE MONTGOMERY COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION
July 11, 2019

RE: RICHARD MONTGOMERY HIGH SCHOOL’S DEFECTIVE AND DANGEROUS ARTIFICIAL TURF
FROM: JOSEPH P KING, STUDENT

Good evening members of the Board of Education and Superintendent Smith. My name is JOEY King and I am a student from Julius West. My brother is on the Richard Montgomery Football Team and I am here to speak on his behalf since he is at health class this morning.

Since football practice is about to start again, we have all been talking about various home-made padding that we may be able to use to protect his skin, elbows, and legs when practice starts again and during the season.

We were talking about the reports that you also heard about last month at this meeting and also about testimony that you heard last year school year from Molly Winchenbach from the Soccer Team. It seems sad to know that there still hasn’t been commitment by the County to do anything about this during the summer before all the athletes are back on the field. “Looking into it,” was the answer that was given at the last meeting but that is not a good enough answer and probably wouldn’t be one that our teachers would accept if we tried that.

MCPS has already sent out samples of the turf and found clear reasons for the difference between our
field and the other field at Whitman that was replaced recently. This has been known since February.
Can you please tell me, today, a reason that this is being ignored?

• RM’s field is four times the FIFA standard!

Can you please tell me, as I am sure you have found out by now, what was the reason for this?
Who is responsible?
When is it going to be fixed?

MCPS has already verified what was obvious: there is something very wrong with the RM turf and the injuries are too many.
What are you going to do about it?

The band-aid that MCPS came up with last spring did not work. The injuries have continued.
Not only are you putting their bodies in danger, you are also putting their futures at risk because their
ability to perform is affected. It is unfair for the players that have worked so hard to have their
opportunities for college scholarship potentially affected due to MCPS not choosing to do the right thing here.

This cannot be the outcome with which you are satisfied.

I have heard that MCPS is in the investigating the replacement of all or most of the fill in RM’s turf all at once over the summer but, since I haven’t heard more, I am afraid that you have decided to not allocate funds or energy for us.

For the sake of my teammates, I am asking you to ensure this remediation gets done immediately.
Please. Do you agree that you owe it to the students whose health and safety you say are your top
priority.

You know, for fact, that this turf is 4x the standard for abrasiveness.
You know the reasons why it is so abrasive.
You know what you need to do to fix it.
Don’t waste anymore time while more students get hurt.

Please. Do it now.

Thank you.

NEW: RMHS Athlete was Correct. RMHS Field is More Abrasive. Confirmed Again in July Test. #artificialturf #GrassIsSoftest

In the fall of 2018, a Richard Montgomery High School athlete complained to the Board of Education about the abrasiveness of the new RMHS artificial turf field.
ABC7 covered the story.

http://parentscoalitionmc.blogspot.com/2018/11/7-on-your-side-students-wounded-by.html

Now, in August of 2019, MCPS releases new abrasiveness test information that shows the RMHS artificial turf field is still the most abrasive surface of the fields tested.  For comparison, the first image shows the abrasiveness of Kentucky bluegrass and Tall fescue.

https://plantscience.psu.edu/research/centers/ssrc/research/infill/abrasion-indices-of-synthetic-and-natural-turf

MCPS Field Testing of Artif... by Parents' Coalition of Montg... on Scribd

Breaking: Board of Ed Keeps Dangerous Field in Use Despite Testing Showing Field 4 Times as Abrasive as FIFA Standard. #SueUsWeDon'tCare #SuckItUpKids

Public Comments of Jennifer Young

Before the

Montgomery County Board of Education

 June 24, 2019

On Richard Montgomery High School’s Artificial Turf

Good evening members of the Board of Education and Superintendent Smith.  You
may remember at the CIP hearings in November a student from Richard
Montgomery who plays on the soccer team as a goalie, Molly Winchenbach.  She
testified about the unusual abrasiveness of RM’s new artificial turf field and the
resulting injuries suffered by student athletes.  She is my daughter.  She would be
here tonight to give you this update and make this plea herself, but she is at practice.  High school athletes never seem to have a season off these days.

To MCPS’s credit, after Molly’s testimony, they sent out samples of RM’s and Whitman’s artificial turf for independent testing to a lab in Canada.  Both
fields had been installed at the same time using the same organic Zeofill rock/sand mix but their effect on the athletes was drastically different with RM’s field causing substantially more serious abrasion injuries.  That different experience of
the athletes was confirmed by the objective tests.  Although in my meeting with the
Director of Construction and Director of Athletics back in February to go over the
results of the tests, I was not permitted to keep a copy, I wrote down the pertinent
results right after the meeting, so my numbers are within a few points.  There was
agreement in the room that the results were shocking.  The abrasiveness of the field
was measured against FIFA’s standard of 30.

Old crumb rubber fields tested a 3. 

Whitman’s field tested a 20.  

RM’s field tested 128!
Four times the FIFA standard!

The lab tests also figured out why – the volcanic rock particles used in
the RM field Zeofill were much larger than those used at Whitman, and at RM, the
rock was layered with the sand like a cake, rather than all mixed together, as it was
at Whitman.  

Now that MCPS has verified what we have been saying all along – there is
something very wrong with the RM turf – it is so abrasive, it is tearing the skin off
the athletes, what are you going to do about it?  MCPS thought that perhaps they
had solved the problem for this spring.  They had removed some of the fill and
tried to mix up the layers more by deep tining it.  The plan then was to just replace
the offending larger particle fill with the smaller particle fill gradually with regular
monthly maintenance.  But, I’m here to tell you, on behalf of my daughter and the
other student athletes who are using and will be using this field in the fall
regularly, that MCPS’s remediation plan is not aggressive enough.  I’ve provided
you with a picture of what happened to Molly’s leg the first time she slid on the
turf this spring to stop a ball coming into the goal.  The RM turf scraped off the top
layer of about 6 inches of her skin.  This cannot be the conditions under which you
expect student athletes to play.  While all athletes may not experience the
abrasiveness of the RM field the same, it is particularly damaging to the students,
like Molly in positions, like goalie, who have to slide on the turf all the time.   She
plays on turf all over the county, both indoor and outdoor, and only receives
serious injuries like this from the RM turf.  

I understand that MCPS is in the process of asking the manufacturer of the
turf how much it will cost to replace all or most of the fill in RM’s turf all at once
over the summer.  I am asking you to ensure this remediation gets done
immediately.   (And any cost should not come out of CIP funds already allocated
to capital expenditures for RM, which needs substantial expansion over the
summer just to keep up with its ever growing student population.) You owe it to
the students whose health and safety you say are your top priority.  You now know
this turf is 4x the standard for abrasiveness, you know the reasons why it is so
abrasive, and you know what you need to do to fix it.  Don’t waste anymore time
while more students get hurt.  Do it now.
 Thank you.

UPDATE:  Board of Education sneaks February Report on to their website.

"Skin lacerations, gashes are open wounds for months, increased injuries" from NEW RMHS Artificial Turf #zeolite #plasticgrass #MoreBandages

At the November 8, 2018, Montgomery County Board of Education public hearing on school facilities a Richard Montgomery High School student gave public comment about the injuries caused by the new artificial turf at the school.  Watch her statement below.

The Board of Education calls this a "best practice."

The Board of Education used $562,721 of Operating Budget funds to pay for this artificial turf.  That means they sacrificed teacher salaries to pay for this new field.  They did not use Capital Budget (bricks and mortar) funds.  There is no money available to replace this field again.
Students will need to buy more bandages.