What's at stake?
Fresno High School has lost the most students out of any comprehensive high school in Fresno Unified over the course of the last decade, which is attributed to the same environmental factors impacting schools across the country. For Fresno High, a remedy to enrollment decline could lie within the immediate historic community that surrounds it.
No matter what he tried, Simon Biasell couldn’t convince his daughter to attend Fresno High School.
He tried, he said, but her heart was set on Bullard High.
Biasell, who serves as the lead pastor at the Big Red Church, “lives, works and worships” within the Fresno High neighborhood, where he and his family have lived for nearly two decades.
And even though they love the attractive architecture and walkable sidewalks of one of Fresno’s most desirable neighborhoods, his daughter hasn’t wanted to attend the city’s most storied high school.
“I feel guilty that we don’t send our kids to the schools in our neighborhood,” Biasell said, “because I know that not only does it have an effect on the school, but it has an effect on our neighborhood.”
Biasell isn’t alone in making this decision; he says that choosing a Fresno Unified school is a common dilemma that parents run into and nobody wants their kids in a school that isn’t at least believed to be the best.
As students have started disappearing from Fresno Unified’s schools, the city’s oldest school has had the second highest student enrollment decline in the last decade, losing 462 students or roughly a fifth of its student population in only 10 years. Districtwide, FUSD has lost nearly 4,000 students in the last 10 years and expects to lose another 4,000 students over the next three years as the losses gain momentum.
And numbers show that students aren’t necessarily moving. They’re opting out of Fresno High, specifically. Hundreds of area students, like Biasell’s children, decline to attend their neighborhood school, but don’t move outside the neighborhood, a pattern district leaders refer to as “transiency.”
At 137 years old, Fresno High is the oldest school in Fresno and one of the oldest in all of California. First opening in 1889 in downtown Fresno, the city’s namesake high school has been at its Echo Avenue location for more than a century.
Dozens of notable alumni have walked the corridors of Royce Hall over the years. Sam Peckinpah directed the Wild Bunch. William Saroyan dropped out of Fresno High. Tom Seaver won three Cy Young Awards. Frank Chance won two World Series rings and was the subject of one of old-timey baseball’s most famous poems. Both are enshrined at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
But all of that feels like a long time ago as neighborhood kids are opting out.
Now, nearly one in four Fresno High transfer students land at Bullard High in northwest Fresno. District data shows that since the 2016-17 school year, 1,343 students have transferred out of Fresno High, with 325 students, or nearly a quarter (24%), enrolling at Bullard.
Andy Levine, who oversees the Fresno High region on FUSD’s board of trustees, says the district wants to make more investments into Fresno High and says solutions to attract more students to FHS could come from partnerships with the City of Fresno. Though he acknowledged no serious discussions have taken place to this point.
Even with new investments, Biasell said that he and other parents in the district have all struggled deciding which schools in Fresno Unified to send their children to, and, he said, choosing any FUSD school can feel like compromising on your child’s education.
At Fresno High, just 12.5% of students are proficient in math, and 37% are proficient in English literacy, according to 2025 state testing scores.
“That’s just the dilemma that I feel like so many parents have, that to send your kids to a Fresno Unified School means that you are willing to compromise on their education, and that’s why so many parents send their kids to Clovis Unified.”
What’s contributing to Fresno High’s severe enrollment decline and high transfer rates?
Plunging enrollment at FUSD in general and Fresno High in particular are a result of multiple factors affecting schools nationwide: declining birthrates, higher costs of living and people moving around and out of the state.
Some of Fresno High’s enrollment issues stem from challenging school boundaries in the city.
Principal Amy Smith told Fresnoland that the school’s location in the middle of Fresno contributes to the enrollment decline and high student transiency, as it is “landlocked” by the Edison, Roosevelt, McLane and Bullard regions. It also borders Central Unified to the west, which has space for developments to attract new families. Fresno Unified is not landlocked in the Edison region, but the city has struggled to attract new, market rate developments in southwest Fresno.
Clovis Unified has seen steady growth in the same time span that Fresno Unified has lost nearly 4,000 students. In the 2025-26 school year alone, Clovis Unified gained nearly 400 students. Some of Clovis Unified’s high schools are landlocked – like Clovis West, for instance – but homebuilders are still clamoring for more lots to develop around the district’s newer facilities, like Clovis North or Clovis South, which is at the Terry Bradley Educational Center at the heart of Fresno’s proposed Southeast Development Area plan.
Smith noted that in the early 2010s, district area boundaries were changed and caused Fresno High to lose Wawona Middle School, a “feeder” school, to the Bullard region. She said that the high school’s only true middle school is Fort Miller, since the Cooper Academy and Hamilton K-8 are technically magnet schools that require transfer requests for enrollment.
Fresno Unified’s transfer portal is open in the fall and not always well-known by parents. But those that know about it, tend to enjoy it.
“There’s a lot of families in our district that love the transfer process, and they transfer their students in for certain reasons,” Smith added, explaining “some of our Cooper kids end up going to Duncan, which is a transfer school, Design Science, which is a transfer school, and so they’re maneuvering our transfer system and they know their “in” trajectory, but it’s not necessarily Fresno High’s “in” trajectory.”
On top of this, Fresno High’s proximity to magnet schools and high concentrations of foster and homeless students in the school’s region have contributed to the school’s enrollment decline and transiency.
Since 2000, Fresno Unified has paved the way for multiple specialty high schools, including the Phillip J. Patiño School of Entrepreneurship and Design Science Middle College High, inadvertently causing more competition with the district’s neighborhood high schools.
Smith also said that enrollment has been declining because of the lack of space for new home developments near the school.
“Our infrastructure is already set, we’re not building new homes,” Smith said
Fresno developers’ preference for building sprawling single-family subdivisions over new infill apartments – even in a walkable, historic neighborhood – means that being landlocked can stifle growth opportunities.
Paul Idsvoog, the district’s chief of operations, said that, under the current housing market, the desirable Fresno High neighborhood doesn’t have a lot to offer that most first-time homebuyers or young families can afford.
But compared to other high schools, Fresno High has seen the third highest number of students transferring to other schools in the last 10 years. McLane High and Hoover High saw more transfers in the same timespan, with 1,979 and 1,419 transfers each, respectively.
Another contributing factor is sports. A not insignificant number of student athletes no longer want to play for the school that has produced more than a few professional and Hall of Fame level athletes.
Levine said it is hard to quantify how significant of a draw athletics are, but anecdotally, he acknowledged Fresno High struggles to keep pace with sports programs in neighboring schools and communities, like Clovis.
“We’re not in a place socioeconomically as a city and as a district where we can compete athletically with, in terms of facilities with Clovis Unified,” Levine said.
Fresno High is still a ‘great school’
In California, school funding is directly tied to its student enrollment and attendance. Jose Sandoval, a teacher at Fresno High, says that declining enrollment means declining funding, which forces districts to reshuffle staff to meet new demands.
That means that while teachers don’t lose their jobs, they are transferred to other school sites to teach and leave behind the school and students they serve. Sandoval also said that the loss of support staff can negatively impact how much schools can serve the emotional needs of students.
At the same time, Sandoval explained that the declining enrollment has led to smaller class sizes at Fresno High, which has given teachers a bit of room to further support students.
“I wouldn’t call it a blessing-in-disguise, but the reality is that there’s a couple less students per classroom, which allows us to focus more on students that may need that extra time,” Sandoval said in an interview.
“Sure, the tiny enrollment is an issue, it’s an issue statewide, it’s an issue nationwide, to be honest, but Fresno High School continues to be a great school, and it offers a variety of different pathways for parents to consider sending their kids to our school, because they truly do get a great education at our site,” Sandoval said.
Fresno High School is the only high school in the district that offers international baccalaureate (IB) programs, a more rigorous curriculum emphasizing critical thinking and global citizenship. In fact, students can opt to join three IB career related programs that allow them to earn college credits and develop skills in construction design and media.
Hope is not lost
Tackling the enrollment problem is challenging. Idsvoog said the district is considering consolidating some programs and possibly expanding some middle schools to include the sixth grade. Campus consolidation, Idsvoog said, would be a last-resort option, but it’s not off the table, either.
Alvin Makori, a researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Southern California in urban education policy, said that while school closures can help balance budgets, they don’t typically incentivize students to come back.
Makori says the community’s declining birthrates, changing immigration patterns and neighborhood families opting out all point to the same conclusion: Fresno Unified’s enrollment issues are not about to slow down any time soon.
“I see a very similar pattern in Los Angeles Unified, Sacramento Unified, San Francisco Unified,” Makori said.
Makori says that the dynamic between decreasing enrollment at FUSD and steady enrollment gains in Clovis Unified is similar to other school districts where student growth follows new home developments.
“Elk Grove, just south of Sacramento, [is] a very large suburban town that is projected to continue to have increased enrollment, yet the district right next to it, Sacramento Unified, is projected to continue having decreased enrollment,” Makori said.
Here at home, Clovis Unified continues to build new schools as Fresno Unified talks about programing and campus consolidation.
Makori also said that declining enrollment can be remedied.
Referencing a report written alongside dean of USC Rossier School of Education Pedro Noguera, Makori explained that partnerships between schools, the communities they serve and cities are needed to first enact a culture change that then attracts community.
While Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer has been vocal about seeing Fresno Unified schools succeed, he’s also been critical of the district’s board over its vote on the Southeast Development Area (SEDA) plan, which previously projected the closure of around 11 schools in Fresno Unified.
In February, Mayor Dyer sent text messages to members of the board, pushing them not to take a stance in opposition of the SEDA plan. In the fallout over the SEDA vote, Dyer has followed through on his promise to be more publicly critical of the district and relations between City Hall and district office remain cool, at best.
But, Makori says, if the community ever wants to reverse the trend, at some point, both sides will need to get in the same room.
“Cities can treat school districts as valuable neighborhood and community entities the same way they would a new investment for a stadium or you know something like that,” Makori said.
For a parent like Biasell, investments into communities through schools are exactly what the district needs to build more bridges with families.
“The district needs to be intentional about building relationships between schools and families,” Biasell said.
At the same time, Biasell says that city leaders have to be proactive in working with the district to make those investments.
“That same kind of cultural shift that we’ve seen by community leaders with downtown Fresno, we need community leaders, including city politicians and city elected officials, to work to change the culture around neighbors’ relationship to the schools down the street and in their own neighborhood,” Biasell said.
Biasell highlighted the community schools model seen at other campuses within FUSD as an example of a way communities could connect more with their local schools. Community schools offer programs and resources that are available for both students and families, including tutoring, food, clothing and wellness support.
According to Levine, high schools in Fresno Unified have not historically been community schools. That could change soon, however, as the state budget for education recently increased funding for community schools and could allow up to 80 schools in the district to become community schools, much higher than its current 29.
Levine said that despite the declining enrollment, the district is still looking to make investments into Fresno High, and noted that recent additions like the new gymnasium are steps in the right direction.
He agrees the best path forward would be to work directly with the city.
“I think it’s being at the table with the City of Fresno, of making sure that the neighborhoods that make up the Fresno High region are getting their investment, and that families have housing opportunities, and all the other opportunities they need to be able to thrive in our neighborhoods, and I think that’s inevitably going to have an impact on our enrollment.”
