The Allen Parish School Board will soon be adding lights to the baseball and softball fields at Elizabeth High School to allow for games to be played at night.

“For many years the people at Elizabeth have had to start games at 3 p.m. and parents couldn’t go to the games because they were working,” Superintendent Brad Solieau said.

On Monday, Telbe Storbeck, external affairs manager for Oxychem, presented a check for $202,000 to help light up the fields. The donation will be added to the $30,000 already awarded to the school from Rep. Dewith Carrier and Sen. Heather Cloud as part of the capital improvement fund.

“Two-hundred thousand dollars is like $2 million for these rural areas,” Carrier said in joining school officials during the check presentation.

The lighting project is expected to cost $250,000 including poles, lights, electricians, wiring and other costs, according to Soileau.

“Most of the time when you do a project like this, you pass a bond issue which is not easy to do right now,” Solieau said in accepting the check. “This is huge for Elizabeth High.”

Storbeck said the funding is part of the company’s goals to help communities with their needs.

“One of the things I get to do in my job is work with community members and understand where they would like to focus,” he said. “This project was identified and I am so happy our company was able to step up.”

As a former athlete, Storbeck said he remembers how much it meant to him to have his parents at his games.

In other matters, Soileau announced the district will be using nearly $100,000 in Education Excellence Funds (EEF) to update musical instruments for growing band programs in the parish. The money is part of the Millennium Trust set up by the state to allocate dollars from the state’s tobacco settlement payments to local school systems.

A lot of the students are still playing instruments from the 1960s and 1970s, he said. The cost to replace many of those instruments can run between $10,000 to $30,000, he said.

Both Kinder and Oakdale high schools will receive funds for new instruments for their band programs.

“Kinder’s band program is growing massively right now,” he said. “Probably one of the biggest growing programs in the area.”

The board also hopes to buy drums for Oberlin High School to begin a drum line. Remaining funds will be used  to buy music supplies for K-12 and elementary schools.

Soileau stressed the importance of students being involved in music programs like band and the opportunities the programs provide to students.