Lynbrook is spending $1.5 million on its new synthetic-turf field. The district is taking $5.6 million from its capital-reserve fund to do the field, along with other projects. Voters approved use of the funds in the May 2012 school election. Work is expected to begin in the near future.

Olivia Buatsi, the North Shore School District’s assistant superintendent for business, said the district decided to replace its track at the same time that it redid the field, in part, because officials knew there would likely be damage to the track when heavy machinery was moved over it to get to the football field.

She added that it’s impossible to tell how much, precisely, an artificial-turf field will cost until the ground is dug up and work begins. She said North Shore conducted several soil-boring tests and consulted with architects and engineers extensively before work began. But there were unanticipated costs. Workers, for example, found old terracotta pipes underneath the field that had to be removed, raising the final price.

“You have to make allowances for contingencies,” she said.

Buatsi added that prices are “case-specific,” meaning that soil conditions, which must be factored in when determining price, are different at each school. North Shore’s field sat on a four-foot-deep clay bed, which had to be removed and replaced with sand before the synthetic turf could be installed. Otherwise, Buatsi said, the field would have flooded, and the synthetic turf would have been ruined.

“If you don’t have proper drainage,” she warned, “it could lead to a lot of problems.”