Orcutt Academy High School students spent Wednesday turning their campus into a miniature atmospheric research lab, launching giant weather balloons 300 feet into the sky as part of the school’s annual Balloon Fest.

“We have been doing this since Orcutt Academy opened. This has been a tradition, and I’m going to keep coming back and helping out with the new teachers that are coming in,” said science teacher Ty Fredriks. “2009 was our very first Balloon Fest and here we are in 2025.”

Fredriks and fellow science teacher Billy Jones cycled roughly 150 students through the event, with geology and Earth and space science classes participating in 15-minute launch windows throughout the day.

Each class prepared student-designed gondolas, the decorated boxes suspended beneath the seven-foot-dia

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