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VAC History
Valley Achievement Center was founded in January 1998 by Jolene Billinger and Bonny Hulsy. These two passionate mothers of children with autism had a vision to help many families like them in our community.The school was established for the purpose of providing a progressive, positive and well staffed school that would use proven research based techniques to help children with autism.
In those early years the school quickly developed a reputation for making substantial progress with its students and more referrals came to the school. Some parents liked the methodology that we used in our day program, but it was obvious that an after school program was also needed to help more with behavior issues and social skills. So, we established an after school program as well as our Basic Ed program during the day.
Since those early years VAC has continued to add more programs, facilities and employees to meet the needs of our community. Our programs typically would start and then quickly reach our maximum capacity. As a nonprofit it has been challenging to find the capital to grow, but our passionate employees, dedicated board members and supporting community have helped to make it happen.
Today VAC has 10 programs helping children and adults with autism and other developmental disabilities. We also have 5 buildings in Bakersfield where our 230 employees are able to provide exceptional service to our wonderful clients and families.