Voters wait in line outside the Fresno County Clerk/Election office on Election Day Tuesday, June 2, 2026 in downtown Fresno.
ERIC PAUL ZAMORA
ezamora@fresnobee.com
With the Fresno County Clerk/Registrar of Voters closing election applications on Fridat at 5 pm, the school board candidate list is finalized. Here are some major school board races in the Fresno region.
Fresno County Superintendent of Schools
The Fresno County Superintendent of Schools oversees the local office of education and 31 school districts across the county. The leader of the county office is an elected position. Following the primary election in June, two candidates advanced to the runoff in November.
Superintendent incumbent Michele Cantwell-Copher was elected in June 2022. During her four-year tenure, the county’s high school graduation rates increased every year to 86.2%. Five schools won the title of National Blue Ribbon Schools, and 30 schools were named the state’s Distinguished Schools. Her office also promoted school safety, dual enrollment programs and career technical education opportunities, according to Cantwell-Copher’s campaign website.
Her opponent, Eimear O’Brien, served as the superintendent of Clovis Unified from 2017 to 2023. O’Brien delivered strong academic performance at Clovis Unified, including two California Exemplary/Honor Roll District Awards and three National Blue Ribbon Schools awards. She also oversaw the passage of $350 million Measure A in 2020, which funded partial construction of the Terry Bradley Educational Center.
Cantwell-Copher was leading the primary with 42.8% of the votes, while O’Brien had 30% of the votes, according to the county’s official primary election results.
Two seats on the Fresno County Board of Education are up for election this year. The two incumbents, Marcy Masumoto and Kimberly Tapscott-Munson, are running unopposed.
Fresno Unified School District
Serving over 68,000 students, Fresno Unified has 101 schools and is the state’s third-largest school district. Over 86% of the students are socioeconomically disadvantaged, according to the data from the California Education Department.
During the pandemic, Fresno Unified’s annual budget once ballooned to $2.3 billion. But the exhaustion of one-time grants and years of shrinking enrollment have led to consecutive budget shortfalls for the district. In June, the governing board approved the largest cut in recent history for the 2026-27 fiscal year, amounting to $39.8 million and a cut of about 400 positions.
The district has long been struggling with academic underperformance. To help the board reduce infighting and focus on the main goal of improving student achievement, the governing board is contracted with an outside consultant and adopted the “Student Outcomes Focused Governance.” In the last academic year, the district announced a major win of having 70% of kindergarteners achieve mastery in foundational literacy skills measured by a grade-level assessment.
In November, four seats of the seven-member board will be up for election. Of the four incumbents, Keshia Thomas, the trustee for the Edison region, is not seeking reelection on the school board, but she is running for the Fresno City Council. Susan Wittrup, who represents the Bullard region, is running unopposed.
Here are the candidates for the three contested races:
Edison Region:
Daren Miller, retired school administratorDeshunna Monay Ricks, entrepreneur and community advocateRizpah Bellard, rancher, president of Nova Farming, and agricultural scientistMiguel Arias, councilmember for the City of Fresno
Sunnyside Region:
Valerie Davis, incumbentRiley Talford, juvenile corrections supervisor
McLane region:
Genoveva “Veva” Islas, incumbentKaren Steed, retired teacherMirna Garcia, real estate agent and community advocateClovis Unified School District
With a rapidly growing student population, Clovis Unified just became the 11th-largest school district in California last school year. The district currently serves over 43,200 students and stands out against the statewide and nationwide trend of declining enrollment.
A staple in the Central Valley for excellent academic performance and high graduation rates, Clovis Unified has been a top factor in attracting new families to the area and has fueled Clovis city’s expansion. With a price tag of more than $600 million, the district’s newest secondary school, Terry Bradley Educational Center, opened to students in grades 7 through 9 last year. Clovis Unified is also planning to build two elementary schools in the next few years to accommodate the growing number of youngest learners.
Clovis Unified is considered the largest non-unionized school district west of the Mississippi River due to the deeply entrenched anti-union culture since the founding superintendent, Floyd Buchanan.
That situation may soon change. In July, over a thousand teachers filed a union petition with the state’s Public Employment Relations Board, a move that could end the district’s 66-year “union-free” history.
Three incumbents, Clint Olivier, Tiffany Stoker Madsen, and Deena Combs-Flores, face no competition in their reelection bids this year.
Central Unified School District
Located in West Fresno, Central Unified is a fast-growing district in the region with nearly 16,000 students.
In 2025, Central Unified made history by naming a new elementary school after a Sikh human rights activist, Jaswant Singh Khalra. It is the first public school in North America to be named after a person of Sikh descent. Roughly of 10% of students at Central Unified identify themselves as Punjabi/Southeast Asian, according to the district.
There are five vacancies on Central Unified’s seven-member school board this year, including one opening left by a former trustee, Natalie Chavez, who resigned due to moving out of California. Earlier this year, the board appointed Harman Singh, a community organizer and education policy advocate, to fill the term until the November general election. Singh is now running for his first full term against two challengers.
One race is uncontested. In Area 2, Aimee T. Diener, a business owner, will assume the role of trustee because Board President Yesenia Carrillo is not running for another term.
Trustee Nabil Kherfan, who represents Area 4, is not running for reelection. In Area 7, incumbent Naindeep Singh Chann is a candidate for Fresno City Council.
Here are the candidates in the three contested races for the Central United School Board:
Area 2:
Joshua Sellers, incumbentJohn Nale, farmer and vintner
Area 3 (special election):
Harman Singh, incumbentErica Gonzalez Piedra, educatorLavera Smith, childcare service program director
Area 4:
Carmen Flores, communication coordinator for the City of FresnoJomar Rushdan, management analyst for the City of Clovis
Area 7:
Richard Martinez, businessmanDiljot Singh Rai, Central Unified graduate and student family outreach coordinator for local nonprofit
This story was originally published August 10, 2026 at 8:09 AM.
CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this story, The Bee wrote that Central Unified incumbent Joshua Sellers faces no opposition in his reelection. On the morning of Aug. 10, after the story was published, the Fresno County Clerk’s Office updated the candidate list and John Nale, farmer and vintner, now has a qualified candidacy to participate in the Area 2 race.
Corrected Aug 10, 2026
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Leqi Zhong is the Clovis accountability/enterprise reporter for The Bee. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley with a Master’s degree in journalism. She joined The Bee in 2023 as an education reporter. Leqi grew up in China and is native in Cantonese and Mandarin.