Prep volleyball called off due to heat with this Fresno Unified gym lacking air conditioning
Extreme heat with temperatures soaring above 100 degrees inside the Bullard High gym forced the cancellation of a volleyball match Tuesday.
The Bullard girls volleyball team was scheduled to host Redwood at 6:30 p.m.
But the match was postponed due to temperatures inside the gym reaching 105 degrees.
The Bullard gym doesn’t have an air conditioner, only operating on swamp coolers, Bullard athletic director Brandon Gilbert said.
Gilbert said the players and fans were moved to the cafeteria while school officials “discussed it with Redwood that we would make up the varsity game at a later date.”
The junior varsity match scheduled before the canceled varsity match was actually completed. But the temperatures then didn’t reach 105 like it had by the time the varsity game was about to take place, Gilbert said.
“Our district is sending some folks out tonight to look at the swamp cooler,” Gilbert said.
A lack of an air conditioned gymnasium at Bullard has been a contentious topic in past Fresno Unified School District board meetings.
During a November 2021 meeting, former Fresno Unified Trustee Terry Slatic questioned why Bullard was the only high school among the seven campuses in the school district without an air conditioned gym.
The controversial trustee, whose term ended in Dec. 2022, also questioned why no plans were in place to at the least upgrade the Bullard gym’s AC situation.
Karin Temple, the former Fresno Unified Chief Operations Officer who has since retired, told Slatic then that Bullard’s North Gym was modernized around 2010 before air conditioning became the standard for the district’s school gyms.
Temple described the Bullard gym as having “make up air.”
Two years later, at least one parent whose child was impacted by Tuesday’s cancellation expressed frustration about the lack of an AC unit inside the Bullard gym.
“Tonight’s cancellation of the Redwood at Bullard game is a travesty,” Fresno Unified parent Steven Smith said. “Shows that Fresno Unified and the school board really don’t care about our kids.
“Fresno Unified officials sit in nicely air conditioned buildings, get work off. When the AC goes out (they) get immediate assistance to repair the problem. Several local high schools have AC in their gyms, but not Bullard.
“We’ve been told Fresno Unified would fix it,” Smith added. “But no. They don’t care. They have $2 billion budget and can’t even put AC in the gym to keep students and spectators safe.”
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This story was originally published August 15, 2023 at 10:06 PM.
