Overview:
Three school bonds faced voters across Fresno County on Tuesday, testing whether residents would support infrastructure investments in districts separated by vast gaps in wealth and development.
Little changed in Fresno-area school races Thursday after the Fresno County Clerk’s Office released updated vote totals from this week’s general election.
Hoover High incumbent Claudia Cázares still trailed in her re-election bid, while incumbent Fresno High incumbent Andy Levine appeared poised for an easy victory. Roosevelt High Trustee Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas declared victory late Tuesday over challenger Joseph Aquino.
School bonds in Fresno County’s three largest school districts – Fresno Unified, Clovis and Central Unified – were passing late Thursday, though Clovis Unified’s Measure A was hanging by the thread.
Levine, one of two incumbents targeted by the Fresno Teachers Association, remained well ahead of challengers James Martinez and Emma Villa after latest round of ballots dropped Thursday.
Levine held about 44% of the vote, with Martinez coming in second with about 28% and Villa a close third at about 27%. Levine held a lead of about just over 1,500 votes as of late Thursday.
In the race for the board’s Hoover High seat, challenger Daniel Bordona maintained about a 200-vote lead over incumbent Claudia Cázares, the other trustee the teachers union worked to oust.
Bordona held just under 51% to Cázares’ almost 49%. The candidates were separated by just 210 votes.
Bordona told Fresnoland on Wednesday that the results were “trending in the direction I’d like to see.” He added, however, that he wasn’t ready to call for a victory until more results drop in next week.
“I’m hoping that I win,” Bordona said, “because I’m ready to do the work. I’m just ready to start doing the work to try to improve our district.”
Cázares told Fresnoland on Thursday that she was not ready to concede the race, but that the recent totals were not good.
“It’s not positive. I’m not feeling too great about it,” Cázares said. “That’s about all I’m ready to say right now.”
In an October interview with Fresnoland, FTA President Manuel Bonilla called Levine and Cázares “nice people,” but said, as Fresno Unified trustees, they were not proactive enough and needed to listen to teachers more.
Bonilla did not respond to a request for comment earlier this week.
A key responsibility of the Fresno Unified school board – hiring the district’s superintendent – will likely be one of the first big decisions on the docket for whoever wins the three trustee seats up for grabs this November.
That task comes after Bob Nelson, Fresno Unified’s superintendent of almost seven years, announced in January that he was stepping down to take a tenure-track job at Fresno State.
The search for his replacement raised questions about whether to hire from within the district or look to an outsider – questions that brought the current school board under fire and that the post-election board will have to finally answer.
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.
And three years into their potential term, the 4,000-member Fresno Teachers Association’s hard-won contract will expire – coming on the heels of a tense bargaining cycle in 2023 that culminated in a costly deal and a planned teacher strike that only was averted by the last-minute agreement.
City school bonds appear headed for approval – for now
Three school bonds faced voters across Fresno County on Tuesday, testing whether residents would support infrastructure investments in districts separated by vast gaps in wealth and development. The measures spotlighted stark disparities in a region where one district plans a half-billion-dollar high school while its neighbors struggle to maintain aging facilities.
Fresno Unified’s Measure H, a school bond effort seeking $500 million through a $50 annual increase on property tax bills, was holding strong with about 61.6% approval after Thursday’s report from the Clerk’s Office.
The measure, which sparked debate and tension amongst Fresno Unified trustees, would address just a fraction of the district’s $2.5 billion in infrastructure needs, drawing opposition from Bullard-area Trustee Susan Wittrup over funding disparities between north Fresno and other regions.
But, to the east, Clovis Unified’s $400 million school bond — Measure A — was teetering on the knife's edge at 55.47% after the latest reports on Thursday. It needs 55% to pass.
The measure would help finance the district’s new $500 million Clovis South High School, capitalizing on a 40% surge in property values over five years that has kept school taxes at the region’s lowest rates since 2012.
Interestingly, while it’s too close to say whether Clovis voters appeared to reject a new tax for schools, those same voters appeared happy to pay a little more in sales tax for police and firefighters. Measure Y was holding strong Thursday with just over 66.3% support.
On the west side, Central Unified school voters showed strong support for its school bond, Measure X. Nearly 61.8% of voters have supported the bond as of Thursday. The measure aimed to modernize aging facilities in a district whose expansion dreams died with the 2008 financial crisis, leaving it to maintain 75-year-old buildings instead of serving the 25,000 students once projected for 2020.
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