The future skate park at Lagunitas School will be named after a champion of the project who died last month. Jeff Lippstreu, the school district’s late chief business official, was at first uncertain about a skate park on campus but was won over by students and became their advocate in conversations with the county and others. The effort, which began as an eighth-grade Change Project, is on track to break ground on the lower campus this summer. “Jeff became a proponent in such a powerful way, to figure out a way to make this happen,” said Adam Vurek, who leads the Valley Skate Club. The club is still fundraising for the park but hopes to present a design to the school board in May. Last month, trustees voted to name the park in honor of Mr. Lippstreu. Katherine Sanford, the middle school social studies teacher at Lagunitas, said Mr. Lippstreu’s memory “will always represent the way the adults in this district do everything they can to get to ‘yes’ for our students.” The last time they spoke, Ms. Sanford said, they were looking at the future site of the skate park and Mr. Lippstreu promised to advocate for the project with the school’s facilities committee. “He hated the idea in the beginning and by the end he was its biggest champion,” she said. Ms. Sanford and her three former students who got the ball rolling on the skate park—Ian Andrews, Atticus Bliss-McHone and Dylan Grimmer—are all still members of the skate club. Last year, the three boys, who now attend Archie Williams High School, had an encouraging meeting with Supervisor Dennis Rodoni and county parks director Max Korten. They delivered a carefully considered presentation to the school board, and eventually won over trustees who had doubts about insurance and liability. Mr. Vurek said the changed attitudes of the trustees reflect a broader shift toward more acceptance of skating as something schools can nurture rather than discourage. “Skateboarding these days is a career opportunity, way more so than it was when I was a kid,” he said. “Not just being a professional skateboarder, but being in the industry.” Some trustees initially assumed their insurance provider would raise rates to cover the skate park or would not cover it at all, but they soon learned it could be included in their coverage with no cost hike. “The insurance companies have figured out how to do it, and that’s why this is possible,” Mr. Vurek said. “They wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole, but now it’s just like a basketball court.” In the past year, since the boys moved to high school and Mr. Vurek moved to Sonoma County after losing his housing in Lagunitas, Mr. Lippstreu helped ferry the project through more challenges. He developed a maintenance agreement with Marin County Parks that the Board of Supervisors approved in February, allowing the county to maintain the site as a public park in the future. He also helped pick out an initial site, near the mountain bike trail on the upper campus, and defended it when the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network expressed interest in digging a pond there to control runoff. The park’s exact location is still uncertain, but it may end up between the gym and the middle school complex. Funding the roughly $65,000 project also remains a question, though Mr. Vurek is hopeful. He plans to work with Front Rock Inc., a Southern California company that specializes in backyard skate parks. Its owner, veteran skater Kyle Berard, has contacts at the Tony Hawk Foundation, which gives grants to community skate parks. Once finished, the skate park will be a welcoming place for beginner skaters, Mr. Vurek said, offering a mellower alternative to parks in San Anselmo, Fairfax and Mill Valley. “It’s really built to introduce people to skating and get them comfortable with it,” he said. “If you’re trying to do something like just roll down a little hill, people should cheer you on when you do it.”