Two candidates have entered the race for the Ward 5 seat on the College of the Sequoias’ Board of Trustees: John Lehn, the incumbent seeking a third term, and Susie Nava, a first-time candidate and COS alumna.
On Nov. 3, voters in Hanford will decide who represents them on the five-member College of the Sequoias Board of Trustees. The election arrives as College of the Sequoias marks its 100th year with a $50 million University Center under construction.
Lehn is running on what he says is a decade of record-high student success, robust finances, and new construction. He says he wants to continue to contribute to the progress the college has made over the last decade.
Nava says she entered the race because she believes the board is “out of touch” with the employees and students it serves. She claims Dr. Brent Calvin, College of the Sequoias’ Superintendent/President, said during a meeting that the board had moved away from fully funding employee health insurance so employees would “feel the pain” of rising premiums — one example she cites as a reason to run.
Ward 5 voters will choose between an eight-year trustee who says the college has never been stronger and a challenger who says students still can’t find child care or a bus to class.
Meet the COS Ward 5 Candidates
John Lehn is seeking a third term representing Ward 5 on the College of the Sequoias Board of Trustees. During that time he has served three years as board president and the remaining years as vice president, his current role.
Lehn spent about 42 years with Kings County’s job training office, most of them as its director, and for 25 of those years also served as president of the Kings County Economic Development Corporation, working to bring new businesses to the county and support existing ones. He is a former Hanford City Council member and mayor, and coached youth baseball and soccer for about 20 years.
“Fundamentally, I think experience matters,” he said.
Susie Nava is a first-time candidate and a COS alumna. Born into a military family, she moved to Hanford at two weeks old when her father was stationed at the Naval Air Station Lemoore. She settled in Kings County in 1997, raised her three children in Corcoran, and moved to Hanford in 2021.
She has worked in manufacturing, at a local school district, for First 5 programs in Corcoran and Kettleman City, and as a Kings County case manager. Since 2024 she has worked as a quality assurance specialist for Kings County Behavioral Health overseeing contract and regulatory compliance. She also sits on the board of the California League of City Employees Associations (CLOCEA), which represents Kings County employees.
Nava started at COS as a single mother and earned an associate degree, which she said is the foundation of her career. As a Latina, she said she hopes to show students from similar backgrounds what is possible.
“We need more people like us so our community members can look at us and say if they can do it, I can do it,” she said.
Why Are They Running?
Lehn is running on the college’s record during his tenure, citing what he called “all-time high” student success, stronger finances and a wave of new construction, including a $50 million University Center, a $40 million student union, a $70 million science building in design for the Hanford campus, a $10 million stadium, solar efficiency projects and classroom improvements.
“I am a candidate for re-election because I want to continue contributing to the College’s 100-year tradition of excellence and build upon the progress of the past decade,” Lehn wrote in response to questions from the Valley Voice.
Nava, on the other hand, is framing her candidacy around her own experience as a COS student, emphasizing her understanding of students’ backgrounds, barriers and needs.
“I am running to represent Hanford on the COS Board because I care deeply about ensuring that same opportunity exists for current and future students. Having sat in these same classrooms and faced many of the same challenges our students experience today, I bring not just insight, but empathy and gratitude for what COS provides,” Nava wrote.
Student Success and Gaps in Progress
Asked about potential gaps in student success at COS and how to measure progress, Lehn did not identify specific shortcomings, focusing instead on how progress should be tracked.
“The important measure is not simply whether a gap exists, but whether it is narrowing over time,” he wrote. “I would continue to measure progress through course completion, persistence…and other established student-success measures, with the results disaggregated so that improvements – or continuing gaps – are visible.”
His opponent Nava named transportation and child care as the main barriers to student success.
“On paper, COS is doing amazing…” Nava wrote. “However, I work in the community I am looking to represent, and I have spoken to students, community members, and professors who all have stories about students having to drop classes due to transportation and or childcare issues. It is unfortunate that the same struggles I faced when attending COS in the 1990s are the same barriers that exist today.”
Child care is a deeply personal issue for Nava, who was a single mother while attending COS in the 1990s. She said college leadership has recently discussed and dismissed the need for childcare.
“At the last board meeting, a remark was made by leadership that students don’t need COS to provide child care. That they have family and relatives that can help with that,” she recalled. “To me, as someone who works in the community, who lives in the community, that statement is so out of touch with our residents and the needs of the community.”
Lehn said COS already supports student parents through child care stipends funded by financial aid, county human services programs and state and federal grants, which he said can exceed the cost of care. He mentioned the college operated its own child care center at one point, but students who actually utilized the center were such a small population compared to enrolled students, that the funds were redirected to serve students in other ways.
With that being said, Lehn stated the district is now considering whether to bring a center back.
“We’re in the process of gathering information to evaluate whether or not it makes sense to reinstitute a child care center,” he said.
Competing for Hanford Students
COS isn’t the only community college option for Hanford residents. West Hills College Lemoore sits about 10 miles away, and the candidates were asked why some local students choose it over COS Hanford.
Lehn challenged the premise of the question. He said COS has been over its state-funded enrollment cap for years and remains significantly over it, meaning the college serves more students than the state pays for and keeps adding classes to meet demand.
“We’re serving way more students than the state is providing resources to serve,” Lehn said.
Rather than competing, he said, the two colleges give students more choices, particularly when classes at one college fill up.
“Kings County is blessed to have two community colleges and have options,” he said.
Nava on the other hand, said the Hanford center has been underdeveloped, offering only a limited number of programs on site.
“They have nine classrooms and three programs,” she said, adding that students outside of those programs must travel to other campuses to continue past their general education courses.
Transportation compounds the problem, she said. Nava described meeting a student on the first day of classes who was deciding whether to drop a course because she had borrowed a car to get to campus and wasn’t sure she could do it all semester. She said some students take Uber to early-morning classes because public transit doesn’t run that early, and that some classes end at 9 p.m., after transit stops running.
“People don’t choose Hanford COS because we don’t have the infrastructure to help them access the services, the classes there at their campus,” Nava said. “It doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way.”
Nava said that when she worked as a county case manager, most of her clients chose West Hills for its online classes, support services, and on-campus child care, though she noted that was in 2023 and things may have changed. She called for COS to offer full degrees online.
Health Care for Part-Time Faculty and Union Endorsements
One of the sharpest disagreements between the Ward 5 candidates came on health insurance for part-time faculty at COS. The state of California reimburses community college districts for up to the full cost of health insurance for qualifying part-time faculty, but COS does not participate in the program.
Nava said she supports joining the program and that, if elected, one of her first moves would be to call for a study session on the issue. She said the current board hasn’t looked at the issue and that leadership should be listening to all employees at COS, not just full-time faculty.
“If you have a whole classification of staff saying, ‘Hey, can you look into this?’ and then just closing it down, that’s not working with union leadership. That’s not working with your staff. And that’s not listening to them,” she said.
Lehn said district and union leaders have not reached an agreement on part-time faculty health insurance, but that the district is gathering more information so the board can take up the issue as a discussion item.
“The college made an offer to support the health care for part-time faculty under certain circumstances and the unions didn’t agree to it,” Lehn said.
He said health insurance for part-time workers is uncommon, noting that most industries offer such benefits only to full-time employees. He also warned that the cost could be substantial if the state ends the program and leaves COS to cover it.
“We’re not convinced that the state will, based upon their past record, continue to support that. It’s a significant cost that the district would have to absorb on its own,” Lehn said.
While Lehn cited uncertain state funding, Nava pointed to a different explanation.
During the interview, Nava read aloud the remark she attributed to Calvin, which she said was shared with her during her union endorsement interview.
“[The COS Board of Trustees] want the employee to feel the increase and ensure that they feel the pain of that increase, so they don’t take advantage of having insurance,” she claims Calvin said.
According to Nava, the remark followed negotiations over the district’s most recent insurance increase. In the past, she said, COS fully covered the most basic plan for classified employees.
Nava stated the remark is further evidence that current leadership is out of touch with the constituents it is supposed to serve.
“I’m very well aware when my insurance goes up,” Nava said. “If you pay for insurance, you’re aware. Nobody’s taking advantage of the insurance out here.”
The issue points to a broader question in the race: how each candidate would approach negotiations with the college’s unions.
Nava said she has been a strong union supporter since 2003, when she worked for a Corcoran manufacturer and saw the difference in pay and benefits between its union and non-union plants. She now sits on a union board of directors in Kings County and has been endorsed by six groups and unions, including all three at COS.
“What most unions ask for is to be heard,” she said. “They want a fair wage. They want to feel like they are valued and that they are an integral part of whatever organization that they are working in.”
During the interview, Lehn questioned whether some of the Valley Voice‘s questions came from the unions or his opponent’s supporters.
“It seemed to me the questions that you and I just went over were most likely generated by the union or those that are in support of my opponent,” he said.
The Valley Voice developed its questions internally and from community input, and asked both candidates parallel questions.
Overseeing the President
The board’s most direct power is over its only employee: the superintendent/president, Brent Calvin. Trustees hire, evaluate and can dismiss the president.
Lehn said the board evaluates Calvin on the college’s progress toward the goals in its strategic plan and master plan.
Asked to name a time the board pushed back on or overruled the president, Lehn did not cite one. He said most issues reach the board only after going through the college’s participatory governance process, and that reasonable people working from the same facts usually reach the same conclusions.
“That means that you are aligned, the president understands what the desires of the board are and brings items that are reasonable and consistent with the direction of the board,” Lehn said.
Nava, who has not worked with Calvin, said she has followed him through livestreamed board meetings and described him as likable, knowledgeable and vision-driven. If elected, she said she would start by reviewing the board’s evaluation forms to see what he is being measured on.
But she said comments from college leadership have at times seemed “so out of touch with our community,” and that she would push Calvin to spend more time with vulnerable communities and on campuses that haven’t seen him.
What About the Money?
On the college’s budget, the candidates largely agreed. Both said cuts should not be made for the sake of change and that leadership must remain careful stewards of public funds.
Lehn said employee compensation at COS ranks among the top five community college districts in California and that reserves are strong enough to weather economic downturns without layoffs.
“I support the current allocation of resources. As student needs, enrollment, state funding or economic conditions change, I will support adjustments based on demonstrated need and the priorities established through the college’s integrated planning process,” he wrote.