Naming new Clovis schools after these leaders reflects district’s diverse community | Opinion

For too long, the Clovis Unified School District has been miscast as a haven for rich, white students whose parents are drawn to a district noted for academic excellence, athletic success, and a more conservative classroom environment.

What is overlooked too often is the diversity of the state’s 12th-largest school district, where Latino students are the plurality at 41.3%, followed by white (31.4%), and Asian (15.6%).

There should have been more fanfare when the Clovis school board voted unanimously to name its new intermediate school after a Pinedale native who picked cotton at age 6 and later served as a U.S. ambassador to Honduras and Colombia.

Opinion

The board held little discussion at its May 8 meeting to call the new school the Phillip Víctor Sánchez Intermediate School. It is scheduled to open in the 2025-26 school year and be part of the Terry P. Bradley Educational Center and Clovis South High School.

Satoshi “Fibber” Hirayama Elementary School, which opens this fall, will feed its students to Sanchez Intermediate.

The school board, which named Hirayama Elementary last July, is to be commended for acknowledging its diversity by naming its two newest schools after Latino and Japanese American community leaders.

The naming of schools in Clovis has come without the friction that neighboring Fresno Unified has encountered, as evidenced by recent campaigns to name schools after noted author William Saroyan and farmworker icon Dolores Huerta. To its credit, the Fresno board did name an elementary school in southeast Fresno after U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera without much protest.

The Clovis naming process was not a slam dunk, however.

Sánchez’s son, Mark, told Fresno Bee reporter Laura S. Díaz it took 10 to 15 years of community advocating for the board to honor his father.

“It just hadn’t come to fruition, and now it’s done, and we’re very, very proud to see it done,” Sánchez told The Bee. “When you have a father like Phillip Sánchez, there’s nothing more to feel than a great deal of pride.”

Mark Sánchez said his father and Hirayama were great friends.

“They both went to Fresno State, and they’ve been friends forever and ever,” he said. “Just before they both died, they used to get their hair cut together.”

What better tribute than having their names grace schools where children can see and learn from role models whose life stories resonate in Latino and Asian communities?

Sánchez, who died in 2017 at age 88, told Vida en el Valle in a 2010 interview that he grew up poor as the youngest of seven children. He attended Clovis High, where he was the first editor of the student newspaper.

He graduated from Coalinga Junior College and Fresno State, and earned degrees in political science. Sánchez became chief administrative officer of Fresno County in the 1960s, before being appointed U.S. ambassador to Honduras in 1973 by President Nixon. He was appointed ambassador to Colombia by President Ford in 1975.

Sánchez, who also served as publisher of the New York-based daily Noticias del Mundo, spent time as a member of the Clovis school board.

Hirayama, who died in 2021 at age 91, was born in Fresno in 1930 and grew up in Exeter. He and his family were forcibly moved to an internment camp in Arizona when he was 12. After World War II, Hirayama returned to the Valley, attended Fresno State as a star student-athlete, and became a professional baseball player in the U.S. and Japan.

After sports, he spent 26 years with the Clovis district as a teacher, principal and administrator for personnel until his retirement in 1991.

Sánchez and Hirayama are prime role models whose names should grace the newest schools in the Clovis district. They not only used education to improve their lives, but their community.

The Clovis school board made a wise decision.