Samuel Cle
mens High School was the focal point of the fourth meeting of the SCUC Community Advisory Committee (CAC) on October 22, 2025. It built upon the momentum of the previous three gatherings, where the group composed of parents, business owners and community stakeholders have been learning about the vast, identified facility needs of the school district. This meeting will serve as a compare and contrast to the facilities at Byron P. Steele High School when the CAC meets there on November 12.
It began with a discussion of ideas to strengthen safety and security at Clemens HS and throughout SCUC, including replacing chain link fences that face the public to make it more difficult to scale. Other ideas being ruminated on master keys to open every door in the school district, and moving parking areas to control access to school buildings.
The Clemens HS
tour showcased the successes of the 2016 Bond, which saw the school receive badly-needed upgrades in Career and Technical Education (CTE) and the Fine Arts. Amy Massey, CTE Director, showed off the 5,000+ square feet Culinary Arts commercial-grade kitchen, in use since its debut in 2018.
"When they did the bond, they did this space right,” Massey said. They can actually run two and three classes stacked in here,” adding the space at Steele HS is not equitable to that of Clemens. “There’s one cooking space at Steele compared to the five that we have here.”
Other CTE highligh
ts included the J-wing, also part of the 2016 Bond, which houses most of the other programs, including Agriculture, Floral Design, Woodworking, Small Animal Vet Med, STEM/Robotics and a greenhouse fifty yards behind the building.
“It’s very informative,” said Kimberly Steindorf, CAC member. “It’s interesting to see the differences of other schools and it’s great to see we are ahead in certain areas.”
Fine Arts has als
o richly blossomed from the 2016 Bond, with the Performing Arts Center (PAC), modern choir rooms, and massive storage space has helped the Clemens HS program continue to thrive. Beth Bronk, Director of the SCUC Fine Arts Department, was especially proud of the PAC, a stark contrast to the old school auditorium, which she described as “dark and dingy.”
Another gem from the 2016 Bond is the dedicated Orchestra space, the only one of its kind in the school district. However, Bronk stated the modern accoutrements are not shared at Steele HS and CAC members will be able to see the inequity during its November visit to the campus.
While CTE and Fine Arts have been energized by the 2016 Bond, the athletic facilities at Clemens HS (and SCUC) have lagged. Scott Lehnhoff, district Athletic Director, took the CAC members on a site tour of the stadium, with insufficient concession space, an oft-broken scoreboard, and facilities not on par with other school districts in the region.
Concessions, underneath the bleachers, create a logjam of humanity throughout the games held there. “It’s a mosh pit under here,” Lehnhoff said, adding that the restrooms that are adjacent to the concession stands exacerbate the problem.
Capacity at the stadium is lacking, with less than 6,000 people able to be seated for 6A games- which sometimes forces extra seats to be added around the track for big games, such as the Battle of 3009 between Steele and Clemens. Another eyesore are the lightpoles, erected in 1966, which do not have capacity for LED lighting.
L
ehnhoff finished off the athletics portion of the visit with an inspection of the weight room and locker rooms. Most of the plates and racks in the weight room were the same Lehnhoff used when he was a student-athlete at Clemens in the late 1990s. The lack of space also makes it difficult for current athletes to get the workouts they need to be competitive.
“You need to lift five times a week during the offseason,” he said. “To be efficient you need less than five kids per group in our weight rooms for both schools. You’re just not working fast enough to work at the rate you need to.”
The varsity locker room has the same concrete ceilings it had when it was built - which causes issues with humidity and makes mold a concern in the cramped space. “We were at risk of having seniors not in the varsity locker room, which is a sad situation for us.”
“I think the priority should be our kids and providing them with the facilities that they need,” said Melva Rivera Perez, CAC member who also leads the Clemens All-Sports Boosters. “Provide the schools the money to make the facilities bigger, so that they can accommodate more kids instead of cutting down on sports because they can’t accommodate them.”
Building upon the success of the 2016 Bond, which also provided for the new Rose Garden Elementary School campus, will be the baseline for the CAC as it wrestles with the recommendations it will make before the Board of Trustees in December.
“You see the overall look of things and feel like we’re behind,” said Steindorf. “We need to bring our kids up - they deserve this.”