Two candidates are running to represent Central Unified Trustee Area 7. Central Unified school district covers northwest Fresno and parts of western Fresno County, including Biola and areas near Kerman.
Central Unified encompasses 28 schools, with a nearly 16,000-student population.
Incumbent Naindeep Singh is running for Fresno City Council 1 leaving the seat open for either Richard Martinez Jr., a businessman and newcomer Diljot Singh Rai, a student family coordinator.
Central Unified is home to many low-income and immigrant families. The district faces similar challenges seen across school districts in California, including chronic absenteeism, low test scores, and school safety.
Elections for the Central Unified board of trustees seven areas are held in November of even-numbered years. Elections are staggered so that three or four seats are up for election at a time.
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Richard Martinez Jr.| Diljot Singh Rai
Richard Martinez Jr.
- Job: businessman
- Age: 55
- Residency: born in Indio and moved to Fresno around 9 years old when his dad passed away
- Key Endorsements: Central Unified Teaching Association, District 1 supervisor Brian Pacheco, District 2 councilmember Mike Karbassi, council president Nelson Esparza, and five former trustees: Phillip Cervantes (Area 3), Richard Solis (Area 5), Shawn Brooks (Area 4), Ruben Coronado (Area 2), and Rama Dawar (Area 7).
Martinez said he worked as a janitor and later as a bilingual aide at Herndon-Barstow Elementary after leaving the Army. He taught U.S. history, AP European history and academic decathlon at Parlier High School, where he said his students set academic testing records.
Martinez ran unsuccessfully for the Central Unified trustee Area 6 seat in 2016 and 2020. He also ran for Fresno County trustee Area 1 in 2018.
He was a member of the California School Employees Association and the Parlier Faculty Association. He is currently involved with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legions and other veteran organizations.
“We are not a stellar academic institution as a school district, and I’m amazed that we haven’t gotten there yet, even with the growth that we’ve experienced over the last 15, 20 years, even beyond that.”
Top three priorities:
- Academic performance: improve standards and expectations across K-12
- Facilities: build first-class academic and athletic facilities through the district
- Student needs: decisions centered on students, teachers, site staff with resources directed toward classroom needs
How should Central Unified address facility needs?
He said the district needs to become more competitive academically, arguing that parents should not feel tempted to leave Central Unified to find stronger academic programs elsewhere.
“I think we’re almost too well known for just athletics, not enough academics,” Martinez said.
One way he said he would prevent potential future enrollment declines is by developing programs that give families a reason to stay, a comprehensive dual-language immersion program.
“I want to see us build a monster, comprehensive, kick-ass dual immersion program. I absolutely believe that.”
What’s your assessment of Measure X spending for facility repairs?
Martinez said his primary concern is whether the funding is distributed equitably across the district, particularly to older schools and facilities that have historically received less investment.
Central Unified, he said, has struggled to modernize facilities as the district grows. He pointed to differences between schools in the northern and southern portions of the district.
“There hasn’t been a balanced approach to making sure that all of our schools are equitable in how they’re built, how they’re constructed, and how they’re kept up to date in terms of modernization.”
What’s your stance on the Southeast Development Area (SEDA) plan, and what concerns have you heard from the community about it?
Martinez declined to take a firm position for or against SEDA.
Instead, he said, his focus is on addressing issues within the Central Unified community before becoming heavily involved in development decisions elsewhere in Fresno.
“I’m agnostic when it comes to the whole process of it,” Martinez said. “What I am for, uniformly and 100%, is we need to get a handle on our own backyard first.”
Martinez said he has heard concerns from some local political figures that development in Southeast Fresno could affect the west side of Fresno, but said he has not seen enough evidence that the proposal would directly benefit or harm Central Unified to take a definitive position.
What would you do to improve safety for students walking to schools?
He said the district itself cannot directly control city infrastructure, but argued that school board members should be more active in advocating with the city and developers for improvements around schools and neighborhoods.
“As a trustee, I can’t force the city to build a sidewalk,” Martinez said. “But I would say that our board members have not done a good job of lobbying, arguing and advocating for our side of town.”
Martinez said new housing developments have not always been accompanied by adequate pedestrian infrastructure, leaving some students to navigate stretches of road without sidewalks or safe routes to school.
He said the lack of infrastructure also affects the broader economic vitality of the community. Martinez argued that residents often leave the area to shop, dine or spend time elsewhere in Fresno, meaning money generated by residents does not necessarily remain in the communities surrounding Central Unified.
Martinez said he is working to address that issue through the Central Community Alliance.
“I’m actually bringing together parts of our small business community all west of 99,” Martinez said. “We’re going to start keeping people here.”
How would you address chronic absenteeism at Central Unified?
Martinez said improving attendance should be a major focus for the district, but argued that simply increasing resources for attendance programs is not enough.
“I think we may need to completely overhaul our system of keeping kids attending our schools because something’s not working.”
He said teachers also play an important role in whether students want to return to school each day. Drawing on his own experience as a former high school teacher, Martinez said engaging instruction can help reduce absenteeism.
“We need the district to empower our teachers, our instructors, to get everything they need to keep the kids in the seat, and to get those kids to want to keep coming back every day.”
“Attendance is kind of a silver bullet,” Martinez said. “If kids are in the classroom, I trust that our teachers as a whole will do their job and educate that child, and then numbers increase.”
What strategies or plans do you have to improve test scores, college readiness and overall academic success?
Martinez said he does not view standardized test scores as the sole measure of a quality education, but believes they can be useful indicators.
Martinez said he wants to build a more consistent academic approach across Central Unified’s elementary schools rather than having individual campuses develop different systems.
He said that approach would go beyond the minimum standards set by the state and would provide greater continuity for teachers and students as they move through the district.
“I want to create a Central Unified way. The Central way should be everything the state is asking of us and more. I don’t want just that minimum standard.”
Martinez said he would personally visit every elementary school in the district and meet with teachers, particularly those working in English language arts and math, to better understand what is currently working and where gaps exist.
Martinez also said he wants the district to expand its community schools model, which currently operates at some elementary campuses. He said the program can connect schools with local organizations and resources, particularly in communities with fewer resources.
On social-emotional needs, Martinez acknowledged that he is still learning about the programs and approaches currently used by the district. He said his own experience losing his father as a child shaped his understanding of how trauma can affect a student’s ability to learn.
Martinez said that support should complement, rather than displace, core academic instruction, particularly at the high school level. He said Central Unified’s academic performance appears to weaken as students progress from elementary to middle and high school, making those grades an important area of focus.
What can the district do to ensure underrepresented students have equitable access to academic resources and opportunities?
Martinez said his broader goal is to strengthen the relationship between Central Unified and the wider community, including local businesses, veterans organizations, farmers and other community groups.
“We need to build a community that is partnered with the school district. The district is a part of that community.”
How would you ensure that undocumented families are both informed and protected amid immigration enforcement presences within our communities?
Martinez said all students who attend Central Unified schools are the district’s responsibility regardless of their immigration status.
“When those kids walk through our doors or get on our buses, they are our responsibility as a school system,” Martinez said. “That supersedes whatever the hell an ICE raid or an agent does or says.”
He said families should be able to trust that their children are safe at school and that their education will not be disrupted by immigration enforcement activity in the surrounding community.
Who are some of his top funders?
Martinez, according to California Form 460, did not raise a single dollar as of Oct. 17. Instead, he spent around $6,818 on his campaign.
The California Teachers Association spent $2,301 on Martinez’s mailers.
Diljot Singh Rai
- Job: Student family coordinator with the Jakara Movement
- Age: 19
- Residency: Rai moved to the U.S. from Punjab, India, in 2012 and was raised partly in Kerman, California; he has lived in the Central Unified district since approximately 2018.
- Key Endorsements: Mayor of Kerman Maria Pacheco, California Assembly Member D27 Esmeralda Soria, and Fresno City Council District 1 candidate Naindeep Singh.
Rai is a proud alumni of Central Unified, having attended Harvest Elementary, Glacier Point Middle and Justin Garza High.
He created a petition with 602 signatures that led to Central Unified’s first two student trustee positions in December 2024. He also helped expand summer school offerings and added Spanish original-credit classes as a high school student.
“I am the closest to the classroom,” Rai said. “I know exactly what goes on in the classroom. I know exactly how the teachers are teaching in the classroom because I know the systems because I just went through the system.”
He currently works as a student family coordinator with the Jakara Movement, supporting students at Justin Garza High, Central East High, and Central High.
That work includes helping students find volunteer opportunities, internships and community service projects that can help them build their resumes and gain experience. His work also involves helping families navigate programs and services, including Medi-Cal and CalFresh.
“If voters are going to take anything out of this conversation, it is that I might be a young candidate, but I know what I’m doing,” Rai said. “I am going to serve with the best interest of the students at the core and center of my entire tenure. For far too long, I’ve seen that district decisions are not centered on students.”
Top three priorities:
- Expand career technical education and dual-emersion programs: build more pathways for our students to earn certifications, regardless if they pursue college.
- Fiscal responsibility: ensuring that every tax dollar is spent on students’ education
- Student safety: Focus on students’ and families’ voices
How should Central Unified address facility needs?
Rai said Central Unified needs to work with city officials and staff to make the district a place where families want to remain to avoid future enrollment declines. That includes highlighting student achievements and demonstrating to families that attending Central Unified can be an investment in their children’s futures.
“We want to ensure that our students are attending our schools, and the best way for us to do that is to show families that Central Unified is doing great things for our students.”
Rai said the district also needs to recognize that some families who live within Central Unified choose to send their children to other districts, including Clovis Unified. Because parents can choose where to enroll their children and provide transportation themselves, Rai said Central Unified needs to give families a clear reason to choose their neighborhood schools.
Rai said the district’s student and family services and educational services departments could play a role in developing a strategy to communicate that value to families and highlight what Central Unified is doing for students.
What’s your assessment of Measure X spending for facility repairs?
Central High is Rai’s top priority for an upgrade as it is the oldest school in Central Unified. The second would be the district’s oldest middle school, El Capitan.
Rai said air conditioning, heating, water fountains, cafeterias with good nutrition and seating will help ensure that students can not only strive for educational success but also social and safety
What’s your stance on the Southeast Development Area (SEDA) plan, and what concerns have you heard from the community about it?
Rai said he has spoken with community members who have raised concerns about families moving out of the district, which could contribute to declining student enrollment. He said that decline could have significant financial consequences for Central Unified because school funding is tied to enrollment and attendance.
“SEDA, being a development area plan, is going to hurt this district,” Rai said. “And therefore I don’t support it.”
What would you do to improve safety for students walking to schools?
Rai said he supports Measure S because it will “increase the safety and security of roads that the county hasn’t paid attention to for a while.”
He said the measure will invest back in bike lanes and safer walking areas throughout the district.
“Our district, a certain amount of it, is rural, so ensuring that we have better roads in those areas is definitely a must. I would voice to the community to also support Measure S.”
How would you address chronic absenteeism at Central Unified?
Rai said improving student attendance is essential to ensuring students have consistent access to classroom instruction.
He said the district should make greater use of its existing resources, particularly family outreach liaisons and intervention specialists, to understand why students are chronically absent.
Rai said counselors and intervention staff should first work directly with the student to understand what is happening. Family outreach liaisons, Rai said, could then conduct home visits to better understand the circumstances facing the student and their family.
Rai said those visits can help students feel that the district wants them back at school while also helping staff identify practical barriers that may be contributing to absenteeism. In some cases, Rai said, the solution could be as straightforward as transportation.
“There is no 100% solution to this,” Rai said. “There is no way that we are going to be able to ensure that every single kid comes to class and in their seat. We want to ensure that we increase that percentage.”
What strategies or plans do you have to improve test scores, college readiness and overall academic success?
For Rai, student safety extends beyond physical security to include students’ mental and emotional well-being. As a high school student, Rai said a student’s death by suicide prompted students to create ‘Wellness Wednesdays’ in collaboration with the school’s National Alliance on Menal Illness (NAMI) Club, which focuses on mental health.
At the time, Rai said the district’s approach to social-emotional learning relied heavily on students completing lessons on a computer.
Rai said students decided to organize games during lunch and created sharing circles in the library’s flex room where students could talk about stressors and find ways to manage them rather than internalize them.
While Rai attended Justin Garza, the school had an A and B lunch schedule, which he said made it more difficult for students to participate in extracurricular activities. Some students have responsibilities outside school, such as caring for siblings or grandparents, making lunch the only time they can participate in clubs, Rai said. The split lunch schedule meant clubs often needed separate student leaders, advisers and meeting spaces for each lunch period.
Rai said he advocated at school board meetings in late 2024 for additional student safety liaisons on campus.
“We need to ensure that, ‘hey, if a fight breaks out on the high school campus, which they do, we need to ensure that, because this is a large body of students, how is it that we’re going to have oversight over these students to make sure that they are physically safe,’” Rai said.
Improving literacy rates is another priority for Rai, particularly ensuring students are reading proficiently by third grade. Rai said he saw firsthand that some students could read but were not reading at the level they needed to be, including students in his own classes.
“I believe that every tax dollar that we’re collecting from Central Unified residents needs to be spent on the education of our students,” Rai said. “If it’s not being spent on the education of our students, then honestly, I don’t know what we’re doing.”
Rai said his own experience as an English learner shaped his views on how Central Unified should support students learning English. For much of his education, Rai said he had to take the state’s English-language proficiency assessment, known as the ELPAC, as part of the process of being reclassified from English learner status.
Rai said the process could be frustrating, particularly because students and parents can request a waiver that removes a student from an English learner-designated class. Rai said the waiver can be especially appealing to middle and high school students because those classes take up space in their schedules that could otherwise be used for electives.
“I was one of the students that was like, ‘no, I don’t want to be part of the EL class because I’m losing out on an elective that I can take,’” Rai said. “But I would have never had to do that if I passed my ELPAC test and my SBAC test and my i-Ready test, and on top of that, some sort of other recommendation by the teacher and my grades.”
Rai said waivers can allow students to leave EL classes without demonstrating through test scores, grades or other measures that they are ready to be reclassified.
Rather than relying on waivers, Rai said the district should continue investing in reading intervention, ELD classes and support for teachers, with the goal of reclassifying students as English proficient as early as possible. Keeping students in EL programs into middle and high school, Rai said, can limit their access to electives, career pathways and dual-enrollment opportunities.
“Reclassifying students, hopefully by the end of their elementary education, will probably be the best goal,” Rai said. “And if our district can ever achieve that, that’s probably going to be the best thing in the history of our district.”
Rai said improving early literacy should begin in kindergarten, with additional reading intervention and support for struggling students. If necessary, Rai said the district should invest in additional aides and other positions to work directly with students.
Rai also said free tutoring from credentialed teachers could provide additional support, particularly for students who cannot stay after school. The district, Rai said, also needs to consider students who have responsibilities outside of school and cannot attend after-school programs.
For math, Rai said Central Unified needs to refine the tutoring systems it already has rather than create new programs. Rai recalled struggling with math and seeking help from teachers during lunch before tests and exams. At his former high school, math tutoring was already available during lunch, Rai said, but the process could be more streamlined.
“It’s about working with the systems that we already have in place, trying to refine them, and trying to add to them.”
Family outreach liaisons can also help bridge communication gaps with families who do not speak English. During parent-teacher meetings, those liaisons can accompany families and interpret information about a student’s academic performance and needs.
What can the district do to ensure underrepresented students have equitable access to academic resources and opportunities?
Rai said one of the biggest gaps in student resources is access to free tutoring from credentialed teachers. While after-school programs provide students with additional learning opportunities, Rai said they do not necessarily provide the same academic support as working directly with a credentialed teacher.
How would you ensure that undocumented families are both informed and protected amid immigration enforcement presences within our communities?
Rai said schools should make clear that immigration enforcement is not welcome on school campuses and that families need clear, multilingual information about their rights and what to expect. As one way to reinforce that message, Rai suggested placing signs outside classrooms stating that the campus is not a public space.
But Rai said signage alone would not address the broader concerns families may have about immigration enforcement.
“We need to utilize our department of student and family services and those liaisons to let our population of students know in different languages and say that, ‘hey, immigration enforcement is not welcome on our campuses or district premises.’”
Rai pointed to the district’s multilingual outreach staff, including Arabic, Punjabi, Spanish and Hmong-speaking liaisons, as an important resource.
Who are some of his top funders?
Rai raised $2,753 as of Sept. 19, with all contributors coming from individuals.
His largest donors include Central Unified teacher Jasmine Harika who contributed $1,001, Fresno City Council District 1 candidate Naindeep Singh who contributed $751, and Central Unified Special Ed teacher Lorna Ugale with $300.
