Playing Smart changelabsolutions.org | kaboom.org 31 Santa Clarita, California Population 151,088 (2000 U.S. Census) Development pattern Edge city Population density 3,159 per square mile Median household income $79,004 Partners involved Santa Clarita Valley Boys & Girls Club William S. Hart Union High School District Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation City of Santa Clarita Parks and Recreation Department Santa Clarita is the fourth-largest city in Los Angeles County, located about 35 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. About ten years ago, as the student population was growing and facilities were becoming crowded, the Santa Clarita Valley Boys & Girls Club partnered with the William S. Hart Union High School District to construct and share a new 27,000-square-foot building with classrooms and a gymnasium. Both the nonprofit and the school district are “entrusted with a lot of kids,” says Jim Ventress, executive director of the Santa Clarita Valley Boys & Girls Club. “We all agreed that these were our kids, it’s our community.” The Boys & Girls Club had already been partnering, since 1982, with the city and county parks and recreation departments for access to park facilities. The nonprofit owned a satellite building near the junior high school, but the building was getting too small to accommodate the club’s after-school programs. “We had to grow,” Ventress says. “Our building was only 2,800 square feet. You’d get 30 to 40 kids in there and you’d be full.” The Boys & Girls Club had always included the school superintendent on its local advisory board (as well as the highest-ranking law enforcement and parks and recreation department staff), so the partners had a strong working relationship from the start. In fact, the superintendent’s role on the board provided the critical impetus for the decision to build the facility on the middle school campus. “As a board member, he was also on the facilities committee, and we instructed the committee to go out and find a location,” says Ventress. They looked at various sites, some of which were smaller than what the club wanted and others that were way out of its budget. Meanwhile, the school district – outgrowing its own facilities – had set up portable classrooms on the middle school campus, and the superintendent discovered that his middle school gym didn’t meet state criteria for a school gymnasium, Ventress recalls. “So we sat down and started talking with a couple other board members from the Boys & Girls Club, the school board, the principal, and eventually some state architects to see if we could put this building with classrooms and a gym on the school property.” A combination of funding made the $6 million project possible. The school district received money from the state ($1.3 million in construction
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