Wednesday night, concerned parents gathered at the McNair Middle School cafeteria in Fayetteville to discuss a new cell tower built on school grounds. Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis attended the meeting and brings us this report.
As the sun set Wednesday night, Vandergriff Elementary and McNair Middle School appeared nearly picturesque in the orange glow. But the landscape has changed in recent months. A 150-foot cell tower disguised as a tree now stands in the back corner of the schools’ soccer field. And parents like Courtney Backus Norton are worried about what radiofrequency, or RF, electromagnetic radiation could mean for their developing children.
“The thing that drove me the most that each of you guys have, and I hope you recognize and don't forget that we have it, is intuition. And even though I'm not an expert on this topic, and I'm well aware that I'm not, my intuition, especially as a parent, has been driving me crazy ever since I found out about this cell tower.”
In a public service announcement Backus sent before the meeting, she called the situation a “decision made without today’s families.” The tower’s approval dates back more than a decade, to 2014, when the Fayetteville Public School Board approved a master agreement with Smith Communications, a local wireless company, allowing up to four towers on district property. The decision was initiated under a prior school board and administration, and the site lease was approved more than two years ago.
Fayetteville Public Schools Superintendent John Mulford was at Wednesday’s meeting and says these types of circumstances are not all that uncommon.
“You have those situations that pop up from time to time. This would be my first instance of dealing with a cell tower specifically, but, no, I mean, you do have those things, and I'm sure in districts that I've been in, you know, issues might pop up after I'm gone, and people are having to deal with situations over decisions that were made while I was there. So sometimes not having that full context is a little challenging. But at the same time, Fayetteville Public Schools is absolutely committed to the safety of our students and staff.”
Mulford says the district’s contract with Smith Communications renews every five years, with a $1,000 monthly lease.
“I think really the intent of tonight is for parents to express their concerns to Smith Communications, which really the ball is in their court at this point, and then from there, if Smith feels like they can be responsive to those concerns and take some steps, then that might be a potential, possible outcome that I think maybe parents are looking for. There are some things within the contract that allow us to separate, but at this point Smith has been a good partner. Certainly, as more research comes out around RF waves and any impact it might have on humans or young kids that would also allow us to terminate the lease, should we discover that thing.”
Lisa Taylor is program manager for Smith Communications. She told parents the company wants to work with the community.
“This isn’t our first tower on a school property. We understand you have questions and that there are concerns. So that’s why we’re here tonight—because we want to address those. We want you to understand we’re a local company. Our owners live here. Their kids went to school here. Also, you know, we don’t want to be at odds with the community.”
Taylor said the company followed all required city and federal regulations in choosing the site and brought in an independent radio-frequency engineer to verify that the tower would operate safely.
Independent engineer Jerry Bickle reviewed the design and explained how exposure drops with distance from the antennas.
He walked the audience through pages of data showing the expected power levels from each antenna. He said the design was modeled for a worst-case scenario—all carriers operating at full power—and even then, exposure on the ground would be far below federal limits.
“At the top of that tower, you're in the 30-minute zone, and the edge of that blue is the last part of that is 100%. We're at zero, where it's just 5% of that at the ground level, most cases 1%, 2%, 5%, 6%. So these are very, very low levels.”
He added that the signals are non-ionizing, the same type used for Wi-Fi and radios, meaning they don’t have enough energy to damage DNA or alter cells.
Research supports his findings. Major health agencies, including the World Health Organization and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, report that there is no conclusive evidence linking 5G or other wireless signals to illness or disease.
After Bickle’s presentation, however, parents still had reservations.
Some said their concerns went beyond technical data. Vandergriff parent Katie Moore questioned whether safety standards written decades ago could account for new technologies and children’s developing bodies.
“When you hear that these towers are following the regulations, those were written in 1997. Not one person in here had a cell phone in 1997, and they definitely didn’t have a 5G cell phone. We have to do better.”
Her concern is partly accurate—the FCC’s exposure limits for radiofrequency energy were first adopted in the 1990s and haven’t changed, though the agency has revised how those limits are evaluated and enforced in recent years.
Moore also pointed to the possibility of reduced property values as another concern within the community.
Other parents, like Holt Middle School mom Brooke Johnson, say they’re not activists—just parents trying to make sense of a decision they didn’t know had been made.
“I'm not an activist. No, not at all. I just care about my kids, and I don't want us making decisions. I think about smoking. Tons of people smoked, and it was invisible—the harm—until we had conclusive evidence that it was harmful. And I feel like that's where we are right now. We don't know. And so why risk children if we just don't know?”
Nash Norton, a second grader at Vandergriff and Courtney Backus Norton’s son, said even though the tower hasn’t been turned on yet, it makes him uneasy.
“It makes me kind of anxious. I don’t want to get really sick.”
That worry echoed through the cafeteria as parents called for more research—or at least a pause in construction until they’re confident it’s safe.
Superintendent Mulford told families the district is open to installing monitors to track radiation levels once the tower is active. He reiterated that the contract allows Fayetteville Public Schools to end the lease with a year’s notice if new studies find a risk.
Still, parents like Norton say the district should act before any harm is proven.
“I want to state something on a principle and a foundation that I grew up on, and I try to hold true to this day, and that's doing what's right. And I know that doing what's right is sometimes hard. It's not even easy sometimes. I don't know if anybody on the Fayetteville Public School Board came tonight, but I'm requesting you all to stand up, come back to the table with this new knowledge and education that we have found and presented. Please stand up and do what's right for the parents of your community.”
The Fayetteville School District says it plans to move forward with the McNair tower but will continue discussions about installing monitoring equipment to measure radio-frequency levels once it’s active. Smith Communications maintains the tower meets all city and federal safety requirements. Parents with the group Protect Our Children – Fayetteville say they’ll keep pressing for stronger safeguards and a review of all school-based towers districtwide, threatening legal action if a child were to “fall sick.”
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
