I understand that a decision will soon be made regarding the number of lanes at the new Vashon High School track — six or eight.

I strongly encourage the school board to select a standard, competition eight-lane track. Our athletes have waited a long time for a legal, competition-worthy track and it would be shortsighted to install anything less than a full eight lanes. Should the island’s population grow in future years, we’ll have already made the wise construction choice that will be able to handle any growth — making future expenditures unneccessary.

Installing a full eight lanes will also eliminate any reason for competing schools to refuse to compete on our track (as in, “It’s only six lanes, not the standard eight, so we won’t compete there.”) Let’s not give our opponents any possible excuses to deny our track athletes the right to host home meets.

If we’re going through the effort of installing a quality track after all these years, let’s do it right.

— Katrina Lande