What’s at stake?
In final appeals to the county committee that will decide which school district gets to claim 600-plus acres of land east of Millerton Lake, petitioners said it’s about school choice, while the Sierra Unified community said their funding and growth shouldn’t come at the expense of a developer-led effort.
After a second tense public hearing over which Fresno County school district gets to control 600-plus acres of land east of Millerton Lake, the decision is now up to an obscure county committee to decide.
Residents of Ventana Hills, a Granville Homes gated community in the foothills of Fresno County, submitted a petition to transfer their 200-acre neighborhood, along with another 400-plus acres of undeveloped land, from Sierra Unified School District to Clovis Unified School District.
That action triggered two public hearings by the Fresno County Committee on School District Organization to receive input on the proposed transfer, the second of which took place Tuesday.
It also set off fierce opposition from Sierra Unified, a small rural district of roughly 1,200 students.
The county committee now has 120 days from the date of the first hearing – or until early next year – to vote on the petition.
Proponents of the land transfer have emphasized that the petition is about protecting school choice for parents.
“These homeowners want to have freedom of choice,” said Granville Homes CEO Darius Assemi during public comment Tuesday, “to send their kids to whichever school district they believe is best for their kids.”
Opponents meanwhile have criticized the petition as a developer-backed scheme to increase property values at the expense of the small district’s future enrollment and funding.
“We simply cannot allow this territory to be removed, forcing Sierra to be an ever-shrinking rural district,” said Shin Green, a financial consultant for Sierra Unified, during a presentation Tuesday, “with a smaller and smaller population and smaller tax base over time.”
What happened at the second hearing over the proposed Sierra Unified transfer of territory?
After showing up in the hundreds to the first public hearing on the petition earlier this month in the foothills, over a dozen Sierra Unified community members took to the podium again during public comment at Tuesday’s hearing in Clovis.
Community members and staff doubled down on their criticism of the Ventana Hills petition, characterizing it as a thinly veiled attempt by a real estate development company to raise property values.
“I’m a realtor, and marketing the Sierra Unified School district is so easy. It’s fabulous,” said Laura Corey-Melton, a Sierra alumna whose children also attended school in the district.
“It is a selling point,” she added. “The people who decide it’s not for them … they sell their house and they move to Clovis. They don’t try to change it for everybody else. That’s just the way it should be.”
Two Granville Homes representatives – including Assemi – also appealed to the committee a second time Tuesday.
“Part of a democracy is to address the needs of the minority. There are 16 households (in Ventana Hills) – that’s all there are,” Assemi said. “That’s why you don’t see 50 or 100 here tonight, all getting up and cheering for this petition to be approved.”
They were joined by a third Granville employee, a representative of the Assemi Group (a real estate company run by Darius Assemi’s brother, Farid), and a group of four Clovis Unified students and parents who supported the petition, though they remained outnumbered by opponents of the transfer.
Marc Thurston, Ventana Hills’ chief petitioner, was absent from Tuesday’s hearing due to a conflicting board meeting, but submitted a video presentation the committee played during the hearing.
Ventana Hills parents – the majority of whom send their kids to other districts already through interdistrict transfer processes or by enrolling in private schools – deserve the same opportunity as Sierra parents to choose which district their children attend, Thurston said.
“It’s a choice that the families who currently attend Sierra got to make. They made a choice of what’s best for their families, and they’re very pleased with their choices. And yet the Ventana Hills families, we’ve made a choice as well,” he said.
“As we respect the Sierra families’ choices to attend that district,” he added, “we would hope that they have the same respect for us and the choices that we make on what district that we’d like our children to attend.”
Following the presentations, the county committee’s vice chairperson Daniel Babshoff asked Sierra Unified if the district was compensating anyone to help prepare its presentations for the past two hearings.
Lori Grace, Sierra’s superintendent, said they were paying their two consultants, attorney David Soldani as well as Green, their financial consultant, to assist them.
Babshoff posed similar questions to Thurston, asking specifically if he was receiving any compensation from Granville or if he got any assistance with preparing the presentation.
“And did they receive compensation from the developer?” he added.
In an email to Fresnoland Wednesday morning, Thurston denied ever receiving compensation from Granville.
“Absolutely not. My neighbors and I—as concerned parents—want to be able to send our kids to schools in Clovis, rather than being forced to take them to a school which is upwards of an hour from where we work,” he said. “I believe that the group that opposes allowing us this peace of mind have coordinated their opposition with interested groups, (and) our neighbors have coordinated our request with Granville, which has a similar concern to us.”
Granville’s push to add its properties to Clovis Unified goes back nearly a decade
Petitioners and Ventana Hills residents have brushed off criticism from Sierra Unified leaders that their request is only a thinly veiled effort to boost property values.
But Sierra Unified leaders suggested the petitioners’ PowerPoint presentation on Sept. 5 was further proof of their concerns.
A Fresnoland review of metadata associated with the petitioner’s presentation shows it was created — and last edited – by Granville employee Priscilla Presto.
She spoke in favor of the territory transfer petition at both the Sept. 5 and Sept. 17 hearings.
Sierra Unified Board President Cortney Burke told Fresnoland the file data is further evidence that the Ventana Hills petition is really a Granville project.
“It’s proof, really, that he is behind this,” she said, referring to Assemi.
In an email to Fresnoland Tuesday, Assemi confirmed Granville’s involvement, saying a Ventana Hills homeowner asked Granville for help “to format information” they were presenting to the committee.
“We will never apologize for supporting the needs of our homeowners, families, and students,” Assemi said in the email.
Public records also demonstrate Granville Homes has been involved in efforts to transfer not just Ventana Hills but other property within Sierra Unified’s bounds to Clovis Unified over at least the past decade.
Emails between Granville Homes employees and Fresno County Office of Education staff related to territory transfers date back to August 2015, Fresnoland discovered through a Public Records Act request.
Some of these emails appeared to reference territory separate from the current Ventana Hills community that is being petitioned for a transfer.
In an August 2015 email, for instance, Granville staffer Jeff Roberts – who famously served time in federal prison in connection with a 1990s zoning scam – wrote to the Fresno County Office of Education’s general counsel, asking for a meeting to discuss information he had sent “regarding the ‘Territory Transfer’ process for the land south of Millerton Lake.”
Three years later, Roberts – who then was writing as a representative of the Assemi Group, run by Darius Assemi’s brother Farid – again wrote to the Fresno County Office of Education’s legal team, inquiring about the process of transferring 69 acres of territory he described as “uninhabited” from Sierra to Clovis.
Roberts’ November 2018 emails said the land was “in the vicinity of Millerton Lake” and asked about the California Environmental Quality Act (or CEQA) requirements that come with the transfer.
A more recent email also points toward Granville Homes’ involvement in the Ventana Hills petition as well – specifically from a Granville attorney on behalf of Ventana Hills petitioner Thurston.
In July 2023, Granville Homes associate counsel and broker Mark Waller wrote to the Fresno County Office of Education’s general counsel, criticizing the county’s rejections of Thurston’s prior petitions. Thurston was CC’d on the email.
“Your refusal to sufficiently identify that one deficiency is going to result in a significant waste of time and resources for (Marc) T and your office, as (Marc) T continues to submit petitions and your office continues to reject them without sufficiently specifying the reason(s) they are being rejected,” Waller wrote. “I also think withholding such information contravenes the language and intent of the Education Code, which encourages your office to ‘provide information, coordination, and guidance to potential petitioners for reorganization and to other parties inquiring about the petition process.’”
“Again, thanks for the time, and we are hopeful that you can provide this small piece of information to (Marc) T before he embarks on getting signatures for a third time,” Waller continued.
What is the Fresno County Committee on School District Organization, and how does it work?
The county committee tasked with voting on the controversial petition consists of 11 members: two from each of the five Fresno County Board of Supervisors districts, plus one at-large member who can come from any of the districts, according to the committee’s bylaws.
The committee members serve four-year terms without term limits and are elected by representatives from each of Fresno County’s public school and community college districts.
The election takes place at an annual dinner hosted in the fall by a nonprofit organization called the Fresno County School Trustees Association.
Many of the current committee members are school board members in districts across the county, including Kerman Unified, Central Unified and Sanger Unified.
One committee member, Connie Schlaefer, has recused herself from the hearings and vote on the Ventana Hills petition since she is a current member of the Sierra Unified school board.
Babshoff, the committee’s vice chair and a Kerman Unified trustee, referred Fresnoland to the Fresno County Office of Education’s legal counsel when asked for an interview about the committee.
Fresnoland’s Gregory Weaver contributed to this report.
