What's at stake?
The winning candidate will also inherit long-standing struggles in California’s third-largest district, including years of failing test scores on state reading and math assessments and balancing the district’s $2 billion budget amid fluctuating funding from the state.
A two-term incumbent of the Fresno Unified school board is taking on a longtime educator (with teachers union backing) in the race for the district’s Hoover High School-area seat.
Claudia Cázares, who has represented Trustee Area 6 for the past eight years, faces a challenge from Dan Bordona, a recently retired Fresno Unified instructor with over 30 years in the district.
Here’s what to know about the Hoover candidates’ backgrounds and policy positions in alphabetical order by the candidate’s last name.
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Where is Trustee Area 6?
Trustee Area 6 covers the northeasternmost part of Fresno Unified, surrounding Hoover High School.
The district is roughly bounded to the north by Herndon Avenue, to the east by Chestnut Avenue, to the west by Blackstone Avenue and to the south by Ashlan Avenue.
Dan Bordona
Bordona, 62, is a recently retired Fresno Unified teacher who spent 33 years in the district.
He’s taught at schools all over Fresno Unified, including Hoover, and he’s also held administrative roles like vice principal. He returned to work this school year as a substitute teacher at Edison High School.
Bordona is an alum of Bullard High School. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in education administration from Fresno State, as well as a teaching credential from National University.
He told Fresnoland he’s running because he thinks the Hoover area needs “a stronger voice in the region.”
“I’m hoping that I can be that stronger voice.”
Bordona thinks his status as semi-retired, as well as his decades of experience working in the district, are advantages.
“I have a lot of connections in the district,” he said. “I feel like I can pick up the phone and call people and we can maybe get some things done.”
Bordona also takes pride in the fact that he’s “not a politician” with aspirations for office beyond the board.
“If I’m elected to school board, that’s all I’m doing,” he said. “I’ll stay on the school board as long as I feel like I’ve been effective.”
How would he describe the ideal candidate for Fresno Unified’s next superintendent?
“Someone who’s not afraid to make unpopular decisions,” Bordona said.
That includes holding district administrators and the departments they oversee accountable, which he said doesn’t always happen.
“Not that I want people to be in fear of losing their jobs,” he said, “but hey, it’s a possibility for all of us, and we have to perform. If we want our kids to perform, we have to perform as adults.”
Bordona said the board should’ve opened up the superintendent search process to external candidates from the jump. The board originally planned to interview internal candidates only, but backpedaled and opened up the search after public backlash.
The board then tapped Misty Her, formerly Nelson’s deputy superintendent, to take the district’s top job in an interim capacity.
“Because of this kind of flip-flopping that happened,” he said, “I think if Misty gets the job and truly is the best candidate for the job, there’s going to be a section of the community that feels like, well, this was their plan all along. And that’s unfair to Misty.”
He’s hopeful the district can hire a candidate who the district’s majority-students of color can see themselves in.
“Not that a middle-aged white guy couldn’t represent the community, but it would be nice to have someone that, since most of our kids in the district are kids of color, (they) can kind of look up (to) and say, ‘Oh, that could be me one day.’”
What does he think of Interim Superintendent Her’s goal of seeing 30-point gains in student test scores over the next two years?
“I think it will be challenging,” Bordona said, “but I’m glad she’s setting a high mark.”
However, he said he doesn’t think Fresno Unified can accomplish something like that on its own.
“I think we need to get the whole of Fresno behind us on trying to educate our kids.”
That involves greater parental involvement, especially at the high school level.
“I understand they want them to grow up and figure things out for themselves,” Bordona said, “but I can tell you from 30 years of working with teenagers, they need their parents more than ever when they’re at that age.”
Bordona added that getting back to “some tried and true things,” like the science of reading approach, would help boost literacy in the district.
At the same time, he wants the district to embrace additional measures of students’ academic achievement, like portfolio assessments.
“Kids express their learning in different ways,” he said.
“They don’t have any skin in the game for testing because it doesn’t keep them from graduating. It doesn’t impact their GPA,” he said. “So I just wish there were better ways, or more creative ways, to assess what our kids are learning.”
How would he help avoid another teachers strike?
Bordona said the district shouldn’t wait until the union’s contract is about to expire to reopen talks, and that there should be ongoing conversations about working conditions with all bargaining units.
Bordona was a member of FTA before he became an administrator, and his finacée is a current member on the union’s special education bargaining team.
He received the teachers union’s endorsement over Cázares.
“I do have a background in education and in Fresno Unified, and so I think that helps me to understand our system better,” he said, “and maybe know the right questions to ask.”
The union isn’t backing any incumbents in the November election. The FTA endorsed a challenger in the Fresno High School area race as well.
What’s his approach to balancing the district’s budget?
Bordona said the last place to make cuts is in areas that directly impact students.
That includes music, arts and career technical education programs, which he would advocate for protecting.
Instead, to cut costs, he would first want to reassign teachers and administrators on special assignments in the district to open positions on individual Fresno Unified campuses.
The district used a similar strategy when eliminating 100 staff positions to make needed budget cuts for the 2024-25 school year, which involved reassigning affected staffers to vacant positions.
Bordona would also want to pare down contracts with outside consulting firms.
“There are some good ones, and there are some that are maybe not that great, but they all cost money,” Bordona said.
The district should instead lean on the expertise of its teachers, he said.
“We have literally thousands of years of teaching experience,” he said, across the district’s over 3,000 teachers.
What’s his stance on the district’s $500 million bond measure on the November ballot?
Bordona said he always supports the district’s bond measures.
“There’s no other way to take our 60, 70-year-old schools,” he said, “and modernize them without that additional funding.”
He’s a believer in the value of “curb appeal” for students and the greater community.
“It’s important that our facilities look as nice as they can,” he said.
“Kids may not outwardly say anything about it, but it does register.”
Where can I find out more about his campaign?
For more information about Bordona and his campaign, he said voters can visit his Facebook page, Dan Bordona for Fresno School Board, Area 6.
Claudia Cázares
Cázares, 45, was first elected to the Hoover seat in 2016.
In her day job, she works as the housing program manager for the City of Clovis. She’s worked in housing development in both the public and private sectors for over 20 years.
She has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
In her eight years on the board, Cázares told Fresnoland she’s especially proud of her contributions to getting more nurses and psychologists staffed on district campuses, opening the Farber alternative education school and expanding dual enrollment and college readiness opportunities for students.
She pointed to the Bulldog Bound partnership with Fresno State as a prime example of the latter. The program, launched last year, offers Fresno Unified students guaranteed admission to Fresno State as long as they meet the minimum requirements for entry into the CSU system.
“When I first came on the board, just with my community development background, I couldn’t understand how the district didn’t have a working relationship (or) partnership with Fresno State,” she said.
“There were kids in our district that had never visited a (Fresno State) classroom or never gone to the student union,” she added.
“So we slowly but surely evolved into a better partnership … the culmination of that work is the Bulldog Bound program.”
How would she describe the ideal candidate for Fresno Unified’s next superintendent?
Cázares wants the next superintendent to prove they’ve brought about positive change to a school district before.
She would also prefer a candidate who has lived or taught in the Fresno area.
“Our region is very unique, even amongst the state of California in the cultures that we serve, in the languages that we serve, in our demography,” she said.
But Cázares said she doesn’t have a preference between an external or internal candidate.
Previously, the trustee had gotten called out (alongside three of her colleagues) in a community petition for supporting the board’s original decision to interview internal candidates only. Cázares then changed her vote during a tense school board meeting in April to support an expanded search.
Cázares added that she sees value in hiring a superintendent of color to lead a district that’s majority students of color, but said that’s not the only factor she’ll consider.
What does she think of Interim Superintendent Misty Her’s goal of seeing 30-point gains in student test scores over the next two years?
Cázares said she thinks the district can achieve that, if they cut through the noise and zero in on that as their key goal.
The board’s role in that, she added, is giving the superintendent the “tools to make it happen.”
Specifically, that includes giving their stamp of approval only to programs that benefit students the most.
“It’s not creating programs, it’s ensuring that the programs that are brought toward us for review,” she said, “are the ones that we think will help us meet our goals.”
How would she help avoid another teachers strike?
Cázares said she met regularly with the teachers union and other labor groups over the past eight years to listen to their asks, while also weighing those against what the district can afford.
“If the labor side is telling you our contract is going to cost the district this much money, and the district side is telling the board the contract is going to cost us twice that much,” she said, “as a board of trustees, we need to dig through the details and find out what the true number is, so that we could pressure both sides to come to a negotiation.”
In a third term on the board, “I would continue to do the same thing,” she said.
Cázares enters the November election having lost the teachers union’s endorsement to Bordona.
FTA president Manuel Bonilla told Fresnoland both Cázares and Andy Levine – the other incumbent who lost the union’s backing this election – are “nice people” but that they weren’t proactive enough as trustees.
“Too many times, they only act reactively when there is public pressure to do so, as opposed to being proactive, having vision and taking action,” he said. “They would rather default to listening to outside consultants, as opposed to listening to the experts – in this case, we’re talking about classroom teachers or school nurses.”
Cázares said she regrets losing FTA’s support and, in hindsight, wonders if the district could have done more to reach a deal with the union sooner.
“Could we have gotten there earlier if staff would’ve been a little bit more responsive to us? Possibly,” she said. “I can’t guarantee that, but possibly.”
Cázares added that she still values her relationship with the union and will continue to collaborate with them.
What’s her approach to balancing the district’s budget?
Cázares said she’ll always fight to protect funding for the district’s African American Academic Acceleration Department, commonly known as A4.
She also wants to protect investments in services for the district’s neediest students, which includes funding for staff psychologists, social workers and the special education department.
The latter faced some of the deepest budget cuts in the 2024-25 school year, The Fresno Bee reported.
In terms of making future budget cuts, Cázares has faith in the district’s academic return on investment approach.
The model, championed by fellow incumbent Trustee Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas, tasks the district with collecting specific metrics to measure the effectiveness of programs and vendors the district enters contracts with to determine which are worth continuing to invest in.
What’s her stance on the district’s $500 million bond measure on the November ballot?
Cázares said she supports the bond measure and has been campaigning for it, too, as she goes door-to-door in her district.
Some of the projects she hopes a bond could help fund include the district’s planned aviation academy and an agricultural education center in the Sunnyside High School region.
“We’re in a farm-rich community where some of our students have never set foot on a farm. And their parents pick and pack the food that we eat,” she said, “and (students) have never set foot on a ranch.”
“We’re very excited about the opportunity to build a first-class complex for agriculture,” she added, “and the bond will start the process on that.”
Where can I find more information about her campaign?
For more information about Cázares and her campaign, she said voters can visit her Facebook page or her website, cazaresfortrustee.com.
Who is endorsing the candidates?
Dan Bordona
- The Fresno Teachers Association
- The Fresno, Madera, Tulare, and Kings Counties Central Labor Council
- Operating Engineers Local 3
Claudia Cázares
- The Fresno County Democratic Party
- Fresno, Madera, Tulare, Kings Building Trades Council
- Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 104
- National Electrical Contractors Association, IBEW 100
- Sheet Metal Workers Local 104 (in a split endorsement for both candidates)
- Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria
- State Senator Melissa Hurtado
- Fresno City Councilmember Mike Karbassi
- Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias
Who is funding the candidates’ campaigns?
Bordona has a fundraising lead over Cázares, with the vast majority of his money coming from the Fresno Teachers’ Association PAC.
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