What's at stake?
FUSD Superintendent Misty Her's office warned trustees that SEDA will erode the district's already-tipsy finances and enrollment.
Nevertheless, the trustees punted last night on taking a stance on mayor Dyer's signature proposal.
The Fresno Unified Board of Trustees voted 4-3 on Wednesday night to indefinitely table a resolution that would have made the district the first public agency to formally oppose the Southeast Development Area (SEDA) — Mayor Jerry Dyer’s plan to open 9,000 acres on the city’s southeastern fringe for up to 45,000 homes.
The district’s own financial team has estimated the project could force the closure of as many as 11 schools, drain $200 million a year in funding and push California’s third-largest school district into a new era of mass layoffs. A majority of the board avoided weighing in, voting to shelve the resolution rather than say whether they were for or against SEDA.
Trustees Susan Wittrup, Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas, Keshia Thomas and Claudia Cazares avoided taking a formal stance on SEDA, voting to indefinitely table the resolution instead of taking a position.
Without board approval, Superintendent Misty Her and her executive team are barred from taking any public stance against SEDA, according to FUSD Board Chair Veva Islas.
“Threats from the mayor of Fresno did not deter me from my oath to the students, the families that I represent, or the teachers and staff,” Islas said at the meeting, calling out her colleagues on the board who avoided taking a stance on the plan.
‘It’s disappointing, to be sure’
The resolution, which was crafted by the superintendent’s office, according to board documents, had been two weeks in the making. It passed the board’s legislative committee with the support of Islas and Trustee Andy Levine — Thomas, the committee’s third member, did not attend — and was placed on the full board’s agenda as a so-called “receive item,” giving trustees ample time to review it before Wednesday’s vote.
But Islas said the four trustees who voted to table the resolution had raised no concerns during those two weeks.
“Our colleagues had two weeks where they could have called, they could have asked questions, they could have said, ‘I’m happy to support that if we change this,'” Islas told Fresnoland in an interview Wednesday night. “They didn’t.”
Islas said she was particularly disappointed that the board could not even bring the resolution to a straight up-or-down vote. “We were very careful in the language to say specifically, SEDA, as currently written, we could not support it,” Islas said of the resolution.
“I felt like that left it open to see if there were modifications that later weren’t as detrimental as was proposed. I do think that SEDA is shortsighted. SEDA doesn’t speak to infill, doesn’t speak to removing blight.”
What the resolution would have done
The resolution, titled a formal opposition to SEDA “as originally proposed,” was carefully worded to leave the door open for future cooperation with the city. It did not bar the district from supporting a revised version of SEDA.
Instead, it opposed the plan as written, based on the findings of the city’s own commissioned housing market demand analysis, which the district and the Fresno Teachers Association used to estimate that SEDA would redistribute — not generate — families, pulling roughly 1,000 middle-class students per year out of Fresno Unified and into Clovis Unified and Sanger Unified.
The resolution would have directed Superintendent Misty Her to communicate the district’s opposition directly to the city council, the mayor and all relevant public agencies — the critical step that the tabling vote blocked.
The Fresno Teachers Association, the largest union in the city, had already voiced its opposition to SEDA. FTA President Manuel Bonilla had been organizing meetings across Fresno Unified campuses to warn families about the plan’s impacts. With the union leadership already on board, the board resolution was the last remaining piece that would have formally empowered the superintendent to enter the fight.
“Without board approval, our staff has to be flying under the radar,” Islas said. “Our superintendent can’t take any public stance against SEDA.”
Deputy Superintendent Ben Drati had told Fresnoland in December that the district’s hands were tied as of yet in publicly opposing the project. The resolution would have united the union, the elected board and the superintendent’s office in a single, coordinated front — the first time all three would have been aligned against the project.
A contradiction of Dyer’s December claims
The vote also laid bare the gap between Dyer’s public assurances to TV and radio stations about the district’s internal posture.
In December, days before one of the most packed city council meetings in a decade drew people across town in opposition to SEDA, Dyer went on a media blitz — appearing on KMJ and ABC30 — to declare that FUSD’s concerns were “overblown” and that he had “calmed Fresno Unified’s worries” about the project. In his own telling, Dyer had met with district officials and addressed their fears.
The resolution that the board considered Wednesday tells a different story.
Authored by the superintendent’s own office, it explicitly opposes SEDA as a threat to FUSD’s enrollment, fiscal stability and the long-term viability of the city’s neighborhoods.
The district’s analysis warned that SEDA would “redistribute students away from existing Fresno Unified neighborhoods, accelerating enrollment decline rather than supporting sustainable, equitable growth.”
These concerns were not enough for the trustees to take action.
What the trustees said
At the meeting, which stretched past 10 p.m. and required a vote to extend, the four trustees who voted to table offered little substantive defense of SEDA itself.
Thomas, who had skipped the legislative committee meeting where the resolution was approved for the full board, moved to table the item without elaborating on her reasoning. “I think we’re probably all going to say the same thing, so I won’t waste our time,” she said. Thomas is running to represent southwest and downtown neighborhoods in District 3 on the Fresno City Council.
Trustee Wittrup’s romantic relationship with noted developer Darius Assemi loomed over the vote. Assemi, the publisher of GV Wire and head of Granville Homes, has been one of SEDA’s most vocal private sector champions. He has previously owned land in SEDA, including parcels near the Terry Bradley Center, though a bank has taken over several of his parcels as part of his $700 million loan default proceedings in federal court.
At the meeting, Wittrup argued that the resolution fell outside the board’s authority.
“My responsibility is to govern the school district and improve student educational outcomes, not to weigh in on municipal zoning matters,” Wittrup said. “This resolution falls outside the legal authority and purview of the board.”
Islas was the most pointed in her remarks. “Now is the time to actually oppose it,” she said, “and not after it is adopted, and not after the consequences of the economic impact are felt by our district.”
The resolution, Islas added, also raised concerns about industrial development in the plan area, noting that unrestrained industrial growth near schools had already harmed students at Calwa and Addams Elementary.
What happens next
The vote came on the same night the board considered layoffs of more than 200 positions amid a projected $59 million deficit for the coming school year — a fiscal crisis that district leaders warn SEDA’s enrollment drain would only deepen.
Islas said she hopes the board’s vote doesn’t come back to haunt them.
“I do not want to have to look at cutting positions in a couple more years because we’ve allowed SEDA to move forward.”
