Teacher, school administrator and mayor: Mike Villalta looks back on 70 years in Los Banos

Two longtime residents of Los Banos, Leslie and Mike Villalta, will soon be leaving to make their home in another state to be near their grandchildren. They have been part of the fabric of their community for more than a half-century.

Before they leave, I wanted to talk with each of them to get their perspectives on their time in Los Banos. My previous column featured Leslie. Today’s column will focus on Mike.

Born and raised in Los Banos, Mike Villalta wanted to be an artist. As it turned out, he became an elementary school teacher, a junior high principal and school district administrator.

When he retired, Mike returned to art as a craftsman, and then he began another adventure as city councilman and mayor. Now that he’s in his 70’s, he wants to focus on his family, especially his grandchildren.

“I love my community and I have thoroughly enjoyed my life in Los Banos,” Mike said. “But my wife Leslie and I have a wonderful daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren who live 2,000 miles away. We want to spend more time with them.”

Mike leaves behind many memories tied closely with the community in which he grew up and later worked. Born in 1950, Mike was raised in a small town (fewer than 5,000 residents) where everyone seemed to know each other.

“As a kid, I would get on my bike and roam all over town,” Mike said. “People knew who I was, the son of Carmella and Gus and the brother of Mary.”

Mike attended kindergarten at Henry Miller School when Lorena Falasco was the principal there and then went to Our Lady of Fatima School for grades 1-8.

When he started high school in 1964, it was located in what is now Westside Elementary School on Sixth Street. At that time the high school was in a “double sessions” schedule, created when Los Banos had a large influx of people who worked on building the San Luis Reservoir and Dam. “My school day started at noon,” Mike said, “and ended at 5 p.m.”

As a junior he was among the first group of students to attend the newly built high school on 11th and Page Streets. “What surprised me most was that the classrooms had no windows,” Mike said, “unlike the school buildings I had known, which had a lot of windows. The new place felt claustrophobic to me.”

After graduating in 1968, Mike attended Merced College—in Merced during the day and in Los Banos at night. (The full-time Los Banos Campus wouldn’t open until 1971). “Some of the best teachers I ever had were at Merced College, including art teacher Richard DeWitt and ceramics instructor Merle Nunes. I will always be grateful to Merced College for the education it gave me.”

Mike transferred to the College of Notre Dame, a small Catholic school in Belmont, CA, 24 miles south of San Francisco. His sister Mary had gone there and told him it had an excellent art program, which suited Mike, because he wanted to be an artist and art teacher.

The College of Notre Dame, which had been an all-women’s college, had recently decided to become co-ed and started to admit men. When Mike transferred as a junior, he was one of 15 men residing at the college, versus 650 women.

One young woman, among the other 649, who caught Mike’s eye was another art student, Leslie Waters, who several years later became his wife.

As he approached graduation, Mike realized not many schools were hiring art teachers. So he decided, after graduation, to begin a program at the same college to earn an elementary school teacher credential and a single-subject art credential. A year later, in December 1973, he had completed his work and then hoped to teach in his hometown.

He returned to Los Banos, lived with his parents and began substitute teaching. After a summer art tour in Europe, Villalta was called in for an interview by Lorena Falasco, still the principal at Henry Miller Elementary School. She hired him and assigned him to teach sixth grade.

As he was leaving the interview, Mrs. Falasco gave Mike an old index card which listed a student’s parents and their phone number. The name on the card was kindergartner Michael Villalta, who had attended Henry Miller School 19 years earlier.

Villalta taught sixth grade for ten years and then took a sabbatical leave at the University of San Francisco, where he earned a master’s degree in educational administration. When he returned from his sabbatical, Mike transferred to the Los Banos Junior High, on Sixth Street, to teach science and (at last) art.

A year later he became an administrative assistant counselor there. Three years later in 1988, after Joe Cox retired, he was named the principal of Los Banos Junior High. Mike’s office as principal was in the same building where he attended high school as a student, on Sixth Street.

During his ten years as principal, Mike was fortunate to have what he called “a wonderful staff” to work with. “The teachers, counselors and classified staff,” Mike said, “all considered themselves part of one team with one goal, to help students succeed.

“We understood the importance of computers in the development of the students’ curriculum,” Mike said, “and we developed multi-specialty computer labs at the junior high.” Mike and his staff also planned the design of a new junior high school on San Luis Street, a facility he calls “a functional, safe and secure building and grounds.”

In 1998 Villalta was hired as the school district’s human resources director, the person primarily responsible for hiring new teachers. After seven years of traveling around the country in a continuing search for the best teachers, Mike retired in 2005, at age 55.

“Those seven years were rewarding, but grueling,” Mike said. “I hardly had time to see my wife, Leslie. Meanwhile, her frame shop was growing, and my parents were getting older, so it was a good time to begin a new chapter in my life and stay closer to home.”

The frame shop, located on the corner of Fifth and I Streets, was doing good business as Leslie and Mike kept expanding their skills, equipment and offerings for their customers. “And I was doing something I wanted to do since college,” Mike said, “work in the world of art.”

A year after Mike retired from the school district, he was elected to the Los Banos city council. “I was concerned,” he said, “that too many homes were being built to the detriment of the city’s economy.”

Four years later, in 2010, Villalta was elected mayor and was reelected every two years until 2020, when he decided not to run again. He is most proud, along with the other city council members, of keeping the city within its budget during some difficult economic times, while continuing to provide and expand essential services.

Now he begins another chapter in his life, near his grandchildren. But as he said, he’s not leaving his home town or home state out of any sense of dissatisfaction. “I love Los Banos and the people who live here. I wouldn’t leave if my grandchildren lived nearby. But I’ve always felt family comes first.”

John Spevak wrote this for the Los Banos Enterprise. His email is john.spevak@gmail.com.