Hart district board member Bob Jensen will seek re-election and run in November for a second term, he said Monday.

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“Our community will be even better and stronger when we have strong public education,” Jensen said. “Kids are the future and I feel that I want to be a part of that.”

The William S. Hart Union High School District governing board oversees all public junior highs and high schools in the Santa Clarita Valley — with the exception of Castaic Middle School —  and includes approximately 23,000 students.

Jensen, who’s a certified public accountant, first became involved in local education when he successfully ran for a seat on the Newhall School District’s governing board in 2005.

After his first term, he sought and earned his current seat on the Hart district board in 2009.

“We’ve been through challenging times economically, and the district has done well,” Jensen said. “I want to see us through the remainder of these challenging times.”

Jensen mentioned the completion of Castaic High School, which plans to welcome its inaugural freshman class in 2016, as one of those things he’d like to see through.

He also added that district officials expect to complete a number of modernization projects he also wants to see through to completion, including a couple of theaters, one at Canyon High and another at Saugus High.

There’s also modernization projects at Sierra Vista and Placerita junior highs, and Hart High, which will be adding two-story buildings to eliminate the portable classrooms.

These projects are paid for Measure SA, a voter-approved measure passed in 2008 that called for $300 million to upgrade local school facilities.

As a CPA, Jensen said his expertise lies within the areas of budgeting and facilities, which are especially important to a school district when times are tight.

“You have to to have the money and you have to have the budget to do things,” Jensen said. “Working with finance and working with (the Hart district’s) budgets and facilities is very important to me.”

He also wanted to see career technical education expand and help for the district’s various academic counseling programs.

Chris Fall, whose term is also up in November, as well as Joe Messina, who’s the Hard district board president, both said they will be seeking re-election. 

When asked what he’d like to see happen if the state ever fully restored school funding:

“It’s thinking into the future, but you’d like to restore student days and you’d like to give students more time in the classroom,” Jensen said. “We’d like to give back those furlough days, and I’d like to find ways to help the teachers economically.”

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