Standing at the entrance of Golden Valley High School on Saturday, the 10th annual Many Families, One Community Resource Fair was a lot to take in.
Booths representing health and wellness organizations throughout the Santa Clarita Valley that provide services to children and teens stood end-to-end in the high school’s gym, while students and parents filtered through the grid of tables.
Those booths included health care services agencies like the Samuel Dixon Family Health Center, mental health service groups like National Alliance on Mental Illness, and miscellaneous social-emotional wellbeing organizations like the Girl Scouts, the LGBTQ organization Parents and Friends of Gays and Lesbians and the Santa Clarita Valley Special Education Local Plan Area early start program.
Sulphur Springs Union School District Superintendent Catherine Kawaguchi said the resource fair is intended to make families aware of the surprising range of health and wellness resources available to them.
“Many of our families are not aware of the valuable resources that we have that are academic as well as social-emotional wellness to support the children and the whole family,” Kawaguchi said. “We bring a lot of resources. Families come, (and) they visit all the resource booths … Everything in our valley that we’re showing today is free.”
The fair is a joint effort between the Sulphur Springs and William S. Hart Union High School districts. Kawaguchi said Santa Clarita was blessed to have two school districts’ trustees advocating for the health of the “whole child.”
To that end, this year, the fair featured an art gallery of student projects from both districts, made for the theme, “Many families, one community.”
But this year’s big event was the morning’s performing arts show, where choir students and band students from each district showcased their skills together on stage.
“What a great motivator, to have our youngest children seeing the high school district on stage, and they’re playing with them together,” Kawaguchi said.
For the past 10 years, that holistic understanding of student health has been the mission of the resource fair – ever since she brought the idea to Sal Frias, now the Hart district’s chief administrative officer of student services and former longtime principal at Golden Valley High School. The two of them were instrumental to putting the annual fair together, Kawaguchi said.
“It’s her idea, and I’ve been built like that ever since I became an administrator, I wanted to help the whole child,” Frias said. “That included the family … that’s what her idea was about. It’s right up my alley.”
Frias said he’s proud of how the resource fair has held up a decade later.
“Ten years later, we’re running strong and doing a great job,” Frias said. “The kids are outstanding musicians and singers, and the resources we bring here to share with our community, it’s amazing.”
