Aug. 17, 2025
Hanford Insider: High School District unveils campus improvements
Send me a text and give me feedback on this episode! Step inside the remarkable transformation happening across Hanford Joint Union High School District campuses in this revealing conversation with district leaders Renee Creech, Lance Dowd, and Ben Stidman. Against the backdrop of steady enrollment growth while other districts struggle, HJUHSD has strategically invested millions in creating educational spaces where students genuinely want to be. From the gleaming new tennis courts at Hanford...
Send me a text and give me feedback on this episode!
Step inside the remarkable transformation happening across Hanford Joint Union High School District campuses in this revealing conversation with district leaders Renee Creech, Lance Dowd, and Ben Stidman. Against the backdrop of steady enrollment growth while other districts struggle, HJUHSD has strategically invested millions in creating educational spaces where students genuinely want to be.
From the gleaming new tennis courts at Hanford High to the completely renovated Bowl stadium serving all schools, every improvement reflects a deeper purpose – fostering student engagement, safety, and pride. The newly air-conditioned gymnasium at Hanford High replaces the struggling swamp cooler system, while classrooms across all campuses receive targeted upgrades focused on CTE programs and hands-on learning spaces. Perhaps most significant is the district's $2 million investment in a modern, air-conditioned bus fleet that travels throughout Kings County bringing students to educational opportunities.
The podcast offers fascinating behind-the-scenes insights into facility management decisions, like the careful implementation of the gym's HVAC system to protect the newly refinished floor, and the installation of innovative Peri-Weather systems that monitor environmental conditions to keep student-athletes safe. We also explore how the district's new headquarters in the former Hanford Sentinel building has consolidated previously fragmented operations while creating a dedicated home for Hanford Online Charter School.
As fall sports seasons kick off, there's added excitement with Sierra Pacific and Hanford West now competing in the same league, giving new significance to their traditional "Clash of the Claws" rivalry games. Football, volleyball, water polo, golf, tennis, and cross country teams are all gearing up for competitive seasons with dedicated coaches and renewed facilities.
Subscribe to the Hanford Insider for weekly updates on community developments, school achievements, and local sports as we continue tracking the positive momentum building throughout our community.
You can find the Hanford Insider at www.hanfordinsider.com and on social media at @hanfordinsider
Thank you for supporting the show!
00:18 - Welcome, Community Updates, and Community Calendar
05:52 - High School District Improvements Overview
26:46 - Hanford Insider Sports with Eric Bentley
WEBVTT
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On this episode of the Hanford Insider.
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We'll get an update from the Hanford Joint Union High School District on all of the recently completed projects.
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Rob will review the upcoming calendar of events.
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Then I'll be back with your sports report where some teams are already in action this fall.
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This is the Hanford Insider for Monday, august 18th.
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Well, how's it going everybody?
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Welcome to the Hanford Insider Podcast, your front row seat to the stories, people and events that shape our community, whether it's local history, upcoming happenings or conversations with folks making a difference.
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We bring you the inside scoop on life right here in Hanford, california.
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I'm your host, rob Bentley.
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Let's dive in.
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Okay, so we won't exactly be diving into the plunge anytime soon.
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One of the big items that came up as a surprise to us this week was the news that the city pool, the plunge, won't be staying open for an extended season.
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After all, after pressure from the community, city staff increased hours and even lengthened the season deep into September.
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Those plans were scrapped last week due to a mechanical issue.
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After seeing lots of rumors online, I decided to speak with Brad Albert, the Director of Parks and Community Services, about the damage, and he informed me that there are two leaks that were found in plumbing to the circulation pumps.
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The repairs involved the removal of cement to gain access to the pipes.
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If they were to continue using the equipment, it would cause even further damage and it would be more costly to make the repair.
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The pipes are over 30 years old and the location of the leaks makes the repair very challenging and there are a limited number of specialized contractors who are qualified for this type of work.
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The repairs will be made once a contractor is available, but it will likely take weeks for the work to be completed and by then the pool would have been closed for the season anyway.
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The good news is that the repairs will be made and perhaps maybe even the water slide will be ready to go for next season as well.
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I'd like to thank Brad for giving us this explanation.
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You might even consider asking Mayor Payton and Interim City Manager Chris Tavares about the plunge and other issues at their Council Corner on Wednesday, august 27th from 4 pm to 5 pm at the Ola Cafecito.
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These Council Corners will take place each month and will feature members of City Council and City staff Speaking of City Council.
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They've got a busy agenda for Tuesday's meeting.
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They'll have an afternoon study session at 4 to review crime statistics and landscape assessment districts.
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It's going to be a packed house at the general meeting at 7 for the recognition of recent accomplishments by local baseball clubs and the Hanford Citizens Emergency Response Team, which I'm a part of, will take the oath of office so that we can begin serving the community and applying the training skills that we've learned over the last several years.
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During the regular meeting there are many items up for approval, including contracts, modifications, licenses, reports and appropriations.
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The two general business items include approving $17 million from the city's water fund for the previously approved water meter replacement project, and they'll also be considering alternatives for graffiti abatement and enforcement.
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Don't forget to check back in on Wednesday for Mayor Travis Payton's Wednesday wrap-up of Tuesday's council meeting.
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These have become a very popular way to get caught up with all of the Hanford City Council actions.
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Finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to send our thoughts and prayers to the Hanford Police Department motorcycle traffic officer who was severely injured in an accident on Friday evening when a pickup truck pulled out in front of him on Grangeville Boulevard and E Street.
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He sustained major injuries but, as of today, is in stable condition.
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It was a traumatic scene and having a helicopter airlift him from the Hanford High School football practice field in front of hundreds of fans watching a scrimmage in the bowl was probably a pretty scary sight.
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So please keep everyone affected in your thoughts and prayers.
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Chief Huddleston would also like to thank the responding officers, local EMTs, hanford Fire Department, hanford High School Skylife and especially those citizens who witnessed the accident and came to the aid of the officer immediately.
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Let's take a look at this week's community calendar.
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The Thursday Night Marketplace this week is having a salute to all of their wonderful vendors who have come out this season.
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Music will be provided by the band Silent Silver.
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The Kings Players production of the Odd Couple is now playing at the Temple Theater on weekends through September 7th.
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Visit kingsplayersorg for information and tickets.
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On Friday, august 29th, the King's Arts Center will be holding a character design and creation class.
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Visit kingsartscenterorg for more information.
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The Kids Fishing Derby Catfish Crawl will be held at the Hidden Valley Park on Saturday, september 6th.
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Check out the Hanford Department of Parks and Community Services social media for more information and registration.
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If you have an event coming up and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together.
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Send your information to hanfordinsider at gmailcom.
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Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a complete calendar of events.
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It's the most comprehensive community calendar available.
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Well, friends, if you've been driving around town lately, you know the improvements that have been happening on our high school campuses throughout Hanford, be it the full comprehensive high schools or even the district office brand new district office to showcase here and it gives me great pleasure to have on the show from the Hanford Joint Union High School District Renee Creech, lance Dowd and Ben Stidman here on the show to give us some highlights of the things that you've been seeing going around the campus.
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So welcome to the show everybody.
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Renee, let's start with you.
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I know there has been a tremendous amount of growth in the district enrollment-wise and a lot of stuff going on to help support that.
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So let's get started with you.
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Can you kind of update us on, maybe, the stats of the district and how things have been going since school just started?
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Sure, well, school just started today, so today was a great day.
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Everybody came in fresh and happy and those are always good days to have.
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We've actually been pretty lucky not just our district, but in the Central Valley.
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We haven't seen the declining enrollment like a lot of districts north and south of us have, so we have been steadily increasing each year, with.
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That means that we either need more facilities or we need to redesign our facilities, and we're always looking to keep them in good shape and inviting.
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We always want our facilities to be a place that kids want to come.
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We want them to be happy to come to school.
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It's no secret that attendance has been an issue for everybody across the world, really because of everything that happened during the pandemic and so we want our facilities to be safe.
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We want them to be in good repair and someplace that our kids are proud of, so when they have other schools coming for competitions of any sort that you know, they're proud to show off our facilities.
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So we've done a lot in classrooms.
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Ago at Hanford High School and Hanford West High School that took care of science labs, took care of restrooms, locker rooms.
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Hanford High got a new pool.
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Those were two pretty big projects that we finished up in 22.
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And then we started with some other smaller projects.
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We did work in Hanford High Cafeteria that brought in HVAC that had been on a swap cooler so we brought in HVAC some new windows.
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So in HVAC that had been on a swamp cooler, so we brought in HVAC some new windows so that HVAC would be more efficient.
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And then last summer we got HVAC so nice heating and cooling in the gymnasium at Hanford High School.
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So that was our only gym that didn't have HVAC in it.
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It was also on a swamp cooler, which is pretty good in Tongan about 95 degrees and then it's not so good.
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So everybody was, you know, pretty excited about and not something that is always visible.
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We did athletic lighting, which unless you're in those fields you're not going to know that that happened really either.
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So we had some athletic lighting that went in at Hanford West and Sierra Pacific and of course, the tennis courts.
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If you drive by Hanford High you can see the new tennis courts up front and those look really, you know, nice and our teams were very, very excited to have those.
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The bowl we redid that for all of our schools and the community and the elementary schools, everybody uses the bowl ball.
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We're really excited with how that turned out and we finished it in time for graduation of 24, really got to use it in the fall of 24 with football, and so our graduation 25 went a lot smoother, and then we expect football to go really well this year too.
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So just a lot of things along those lines, and then we expect football to go really well this year too.
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So just a lot of things along those lines.
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And then we're always doing small projects and I'll let Ben maybe talk about all the little projects with, like in the ag, welding areas and the art classrooms, because our operations team is always working to improve something, working to improve something.
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If it's not working well or if the room just hasn't been part of a modernization, our staff will always find a way to try to get it in good shape, just one room at a time, and we're really proud of that and proud of all the hard work that our staff puts into our facilities.
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We take great pride, and that's across the board.
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So let's talk about some of those projects.
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Ben, she mentioned some classroom work and, obviously, a lot of stuff going on.
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What are some of the project highlights that you had this summer?
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Sometimes those weren't getting done until your larger modernization projects.
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So we've kind of decided to go back and we've been doing this for a number of years now and pick a number of classrooms we're just going to do every single year just to keep a fresher routine in those classrooms.
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Sometimes we go into and look and convert lighting to make it feel a little fresher, a lot nicer looking.
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Definitely a lot of push has been in our shops and CTE and I know a lot of times people forget that we still offer those.
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I know a lot of schools.
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You know it's kind of understood that maybe they're not offering some of those programs but we do.
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And one big help is there has been, you know, getting new equipment in there which usually means a power upgrade which we're working either with our team or outside people to come in and do, and then just again LED lighting and just talking with those teachers and figuring out what they need to make those programs work.
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And it's a good credit to that team because they have a good relationship with those teachers so as that program's developing and moving, we're able to kind of help adjust that classroom to keep them productive.
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So that's a lot of behind the scenes, things that happen that aren't in those big, you know multimillion dollar projects that are, you know, a lot more visible to the public.
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Yeah, I can imagine, and, Lance, I would imagine keeping those athletic facilities.
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You know it's nice to have the upgrades, but I know that there's been some repairs and things going on on the fields and courts.
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Can you tell us a little bit about that?
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Yeah, one of the big additions that we've had, or that we're going to have in about a month, is we're installing peri-weather systems at all of our comprehensive sites.
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Peri-weather it's essence, an on-site weather monitoring and alerting system.
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Cif has rules now for certain protocols that we have to take when it gets too hot or the air quality is too bad, or stuff like that.
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They will tell us how long we can practice, how many water breaks we have to take, and all this many water breaks we have to take, and all this.
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What this periwether system is going to do is it kind of takes the onus out of our trainers' hands, who were doing it manually with these devices called wet bowl globe temperature gauges, which was taking time away from them, and they would have to do that instead of, you know, either rehabbing a kid or an injury or, you know, doing other things that they ought to be doing.
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So I think it's going to be a huge addition.
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It's going to be a little.
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It's going to be a bigger, bigger thing than just the wet bulb globe temperature.
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It also keeps track of lightning.
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It keeps track of lightning, it keeps track of heat stress and it's in immediate updates every five minutes.
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It's just going to be a lot safer for kids.
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They're all site specific, so it could be different.
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From Hanford High to Hanford West to Sierra Pacific, I mean they could all be having different alerts.
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It will alert all of us.
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They could all be having different alerts.
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It will alert all of us.
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Whoever I put on the list, so all coaches, administration as well as the trainers, so everybody will be on the same page.
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We think this is going to increase the safety for all the kids, all the athletes Also.
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I mean show that student safety has to be a non-negotiable for high schools.
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For sure, and with the air quality in the Valley and the heat indexes and as Renee said earlier, we've kind of dodged a bullet here in August but we've still got some warm days left, I know.
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So I appreciate that, ben.
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Going back to you, I understand that the Hanford High School gymnasium got an upgrade at HVAC.
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I know that that was a big thing a few years ago.
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You get that gym packed with people and it was pretty warm in there, yeah could do at that point and the team was doing everything they could we used to keep parts in stock on the shelf for, like, immediate repair of those older systems and go into the new system has been just tremendously nicer and even just thinking about some of those behind the scenes thing, we were real careful and strategic on how we had to do that job because we needed to protect the floor because a few years before that project came about we actually had sanded that gym down to the bare wood and repainted it and brought it back, and so when you go from swamp cooler to air conditioning, you know swamp cooler cools by putting water in the air and the air conditioner cools by pulling moisture out of the air, so that can really affect a wood floor.
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And just the timing of it just being done in the summer and getting into drought and bringing that system online at kind of a higher temp for a while and gradually bringing it down probably saved a lot of money and downtime in that gym because we were able to complete that project without having any damage to the floor, which is a huge, huge plus I wanted to move on to the transportation side of things.
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ben and, and I know that people think of the Hanford Joint Union High School District as Hanford, but your buses run all the way to Tulare County.
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How's the fleet been maintained and what improvements have you been able to make in the transportation facility there?
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We've done a lot in the transportation.
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I would say about maybe Renee can help me three or four years ago, just again dealing with things, when we decided to start looking at some buses, we decided that we weren't going to purchase any more buses unless they were equipped with AC.
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As you could probably imagine, back in the day buses didn't have AC.
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Now most of the fleet that runs has it.
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We've probably invested a little over $2 million in the last three years on new buses.
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So you're going to see a lot of newer buses rolling around our area and, yeah, they go in all corners of this county to get kids into school, to get kids into school and it does make it a lot nicer.
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It makes even the trips we do.
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Kids don't mind being on the bus as much, especially when it's hot outside and you have AC on in the bus.
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It's just a more inviting environment to get kids to.
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Where we ultimately want them to come is to come to school.
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So a lot of movement has been made in the transportation department in the last few years.
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Yeah, and you've even been able to utilize some of the facilities at the farm out there by CR Pacific.
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It doesn't seem as congested there in the bus yard anymore.
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I noticed when I'm driving down Lacey Boulevard.
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It seems like you've been able to deploy some of the equipment.
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Yeah, what you're seeing out there is we've had a decent increase in activity at the farm and with what the ag department's doing and that's kind of.
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I mean, everyone understands FFA, especially in Hanford, and all the things that they do, but I'm not sure that the public understands how many different competitions and I'm also speaking from a parent of an FFA student that graduated how many different competitions and things that go on, and that FFA department actually has a small fleet of their own vehicles to accommodate getting the students to all these competitions and just really adding to their resume and their high school experience by being able to do that.
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And that's a lot of what you're seeing out at that farm is their fleet and their tools that they have to provide those services to the students.
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So yeah, that's it's a nice thing to have.
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Yeah, that's definitely an outstanding program, something that Hanford's very proud of, obviously.
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Lance, I want to turn back to you here for a minute.
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We've got the athletic seasons.
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Everybody thinks football, but you've also got water polo.
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You've got, I think, golf, and tell us a little bit about the upcoming seasons.
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Well, I think it's.
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I mean it's looking good.
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We have full teams this year, which is always a great thing.
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That means we have lots of participation.
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Our participation has been increasing slowly over the last couple of years, which is always good, is always at the top of everybody's mind.
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But yes, I mean we have boys and girls water polo, we have girls golf, girls, tennis, cross country and volleyball all playing and I've gone to everybody's beginning of the school year meetings.
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Everybody seems very excited about this year, looking forward to a competitive year.
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What's nice is?
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I don't know if everybody understands, but Sierra Pacific and Hanford West are in the same league now.
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Which makes it nice?
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Hanford High is not in the.
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They're in a different league than the two others, but competitive-wise it works out perfect that Sierra Pacific and Hanford West are in the same league and the league they're in is an extremely competitive league.
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We do well in certain sports in both schools.
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Hanford High, they hold their own in WIL as, as you know, I mean football they're very good at.
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They went far, they went deep, uh last year and uh looking for the same thing this year.
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And we're looking for big improvements at at um, you know, at all our campuses for the year to come and also years to come.
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Yeah for sure.
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The sports segment of the show is a very popular one.
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Eric gives us a rundown of the scores and highlights each week, and we just did a high school football preview show.
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That was very well received.
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Renee, you are probably sitting in the brand new district office.
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Yes, yes.
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Lance too.
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Yes, so we have heard so much about this district office and you recently had your ribbon cutting and grand opening.
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What does the district office mean to the mission of the high school district?
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I know you were very crowded at the old facility and some people may not realize just how cramped everything was, but I know in my visits there to board meetings and standing up because there was nowhere to sit.
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How does the building of this district office kind of mold into the future of the district?
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Well, one of the things I think maybe also didn't realize is that we were in two locations.
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So we had our main district office where the boardroom was, and superintendent of course, but then we had another facility where our IT department was food services, our district nurse and our academic coaches, and so it just we felt so divided because we weren't under one roof and even in each of those buildings or side of buildings we were already outgrowing that.
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I'm just trying to, you know, keep up.
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Our IT department grows because technology grows, and same with our academic coaches, because we need the support for our teachers.
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And then our boardroom was our only room.
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Everything happened in our boardroom.
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It was at the old building, it was meeting room, it was.
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You had to cross through it to get to the break room you had, you know, that's where the board meetings happen and it wasn't conducive to very large meetings.
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So it was hard.
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When we had to do professional development, we would have to find, you know, room on a campus.
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So we started on a mission to find a building and we were fortunate enough to be able to work with the owner of the Hanford Sentinel building and be able to purchase it and then do the remodel to it.
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So for us it's just a sign of our future, and that we are.
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We want to invest in the future of our district and our schools and our community.
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We felt like we you know we did a lot to the building so that, you know, we could fit into the downtown area and and make something good for our community.
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Not that it looked, you know, bad before, nothing like that.
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I just we wanted to be able to fit into the community and make it to where, like we've always been here.
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So I think that we've done that.
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The main side effect of us moving here is that now our Hanford Online Charter has a place to go.
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So it was sharing, it was basically operating out of a few rooms at our Hanford Adult School.
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I mean, it worked out okay, but it wasn't ideal to have that situation and you know our adult school wants to, you know, be able to bring back some programs too.
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So we really needed to find a home for our charter school and it just worked out perfect.
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Limey worked out perfect.
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They were able to invest.
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You know they just really have grown their staff and invested in, you know, trying to increase their enrollment and so having them in that building.
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That was pretty much the icing on the cake of us getting this built, so we're really excited that they're in their new location.
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We have a little bit of work still to do on their building, you know, with signage, but they got their marquee up early and they've had stuff on it since day one promotion.
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So so, yeah, we just feel like it's all of it is just a good sign of positive things in our community.
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Well, I'd like to thank all three of you for joining us this afternoon.
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It's been a wonderful time to get together and talk about all the great things going on in the Hanford Joint Union High School District.
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I'm a proud alumni and I'm a very proud Hanford resident of everything that's been going on and I think that it kind of sets the tone for the development of our town.
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I think if all these district facilities are starting to look great, it attracts new people to the community, new people to your schools, in a time where people may have doubts about the excellence in education.
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But I know by the promotional videos that you've been putting out and the communications with the community through your social media and websites and stuff, it's been great.
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So I'd like to thank you for coming on the show.
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Thank you for having us.
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We are proud of our community.
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We're proud of Hanford.
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We're proud of our community.
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We're proud of Hanford.
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We're proud of our schools.
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We've got great staff that are here every day for our students, when the students are here, and the staff that work all summer long to make everything happen.
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You know, for that first day of school Again, we had that first day of school today and it was a great start to the year.
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But we do.
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We love our community and getting word out about our schools and all of us here and our superintendent.
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That's.
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Our goal is just to be able to provide a great education for our students and our community and I'd like to give a shout out to all of our coaches that we have in that district.
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We have quite a few of them at all our sites and also club advisors.
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These coaches and club advisors, they give their time.
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A lot of it is voluntary.
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They do this for the kids and if we did not have them, we would not have programs.
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So I want to really thank them and they really our coaches get involved in the community and I think that balance really works out well and we're going to continue to strive to try and even build a stronger relationship, to try and even build a stronger relationship.
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I agree with that, lance, and I think about the MNO team here and how great they are what they're wanting to accomplish.
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But even outside of the coaches in the last years, the relationships that are being built between that staff whether it be custodial or grounds, with our booster clubs because there's a lot more communication that happens before there and helping each other, all with this common goal of supporting the kids, helping the facility, just all of those things.
00:26:23.894 --> 00:26:42.695
So I think we're also extremely blessed to have some really good booster clubs and just that good also booster and staff relationship that they have, because we're just able to accomplish so much more when everyone's working together to get something done that everyone wants the same result from.
00:26:43.685 --> 00:26:44.188
All right, guys.
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Well, thank you so much for joining us, and now it's time for Hanford Insider Sports with Eric Bentley.
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And now it's time for Hanford Insider Sports with Eric Bentley.
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Football teams will take the field Friday for their week one matchups and some fall sports are already underway.
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But before we get to the schedules, I wanted to touch on a few things that Athletic Director Lance Dowd mentioned.
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Although Sierra Pacific and Hanford West played each other in their traditional Clash of the Claws matchups throughout the year, this year it'll carry a little more meaning as both teams will now compete in the Tri-County Sequoia League, giving some extra juice to those already intense rivalry matchups this season.
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And also, like Athletic Director Dowd mentioned, all of the sports outside of football girls golf and girls volleyball, as well as boys and girls cross country and water polo all getting going in the fall.
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So let's start with some girls volleyball, where a few teams were in action last week.
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