What's at stake?
Fresno Unified's first board meeting of the 2026-27 school year featured data showing small steady increases in SBAC proficiency across all students since 2022.
It’s been two years since Fresno Unified rolled out its overhauled education improvement plan to beef up student test scores, and new data suggests the plan is working — test scores are climbing — but not fast enough.
With classes back in session in a week, Fresno Unified opened the first board meeting of the 2026-27 school year outlining their plans for the next five years and the district’s progress since 2022 in state test scores.
Two years ago, the district and its board adopted its goals and guardrails, objectives for student performance and guidelines the district will follow through 2030. FUSD Superintendent Misty Her gave a presentation on Wednesday detailing how the district will invest toward those goals.
Her presented data showing the district’s steady growth in state testing for ELA and math since 2022, including preliminary data showing improvements to both categories in last year’s assessments, also known as SBAC.
“We are now at 40% [ELA] and we are 29% in Math,” Her said of the district’s preliminary scores, adding, “we know we’ve got a lot of work to do in math, but we believe that if we can get kids to read, the math is going to start to go up.”
District data showed steady growth in SBAC proficiency across all of FUSD’s regions, with the Bullard region leading and the Edison region following in both ELA and math.
At the same time, the district data from Wednesday’s meeting showed a sharp decrease in SBAC proficiency among students with disabilities between 2025 and 2026. ELA proficiency rates dropped by 5.5% to 10.5%, with Math rates dropping 4.9% to 9.1%
Trustee Susan Wittrup underscored the need to improve the district’s special education capabilities, like adding more certified educators to serve a population of students that is expected to grow.
“Our kids are starting school on Monday at Starr Elementary with two classes that don’t have teachers, again,” Wittrup said, adding, “I say this from being in the system 37 years working in special education in this district, so I love the strategic plan, but something has to be done differently, and I’m not hearing that.”
Her’s presentation also showed off a five-year strategy outlining what the district plans to invest and implement in pursuit of its objectives and a timeline for the changes. An annual plan was also unveiled for the current school year, which Her explained would be followed at the end of the school year with a report reviewing the district’s progress.
Annual plans for the district’s departments were also released and reports will also be made for the subsequent future school years.
The incoming school year will also see the implementation of weekly meetings between departments and supervisors for the purposes of reviewing school data and planning out their efforts to reach annual targets established by the goals and guardrails.
Additionally, Her said that the district will also begin to have quarterly sessions where leaders from each district school site and their respective supervisors meet to review progress and data related to the district’s objectives and to share best practices with each other.
While not discussed during the meeting, the board on Wednesday also approved a contract as part of its efforts for the “Portrait of a Learner” initiative, which is a student digital portfolio FUSD students will decorate with assignments corresponding to different district values.
FUSD will pay Otus, an education technology company, an annual subscription in order to utilize the Otus platform to host both the student portfolios along with training and professional development opportunities for staff. For the first year, which extends until June 30 of 2027, FUSD will pay $152,000. Along with a renewal option for four additional 1-year periods, the total cost over five years is estimated to be $1,790,250.
