Fresno Unified retirement ceremony, June 2025.
Fresno Unified School District
Not all the 270 Fresno Unified employees who received layoff notices will end up being terminated. Instead, many imperiled workers could be “bumped,” or opt to take different roles positions with lower pay, to cut costs, district officials said.
The evaporation of one-time grants during the pandemic and years of declining enrollment has resulted in a budget shortfall and expected layoffs in the state’s third-largest school district. In December, Fresno Unified implemented an early retirement program that drew 573 employees participants.
However, the early retirements addressed less than half of the $50 million shortfall, according to district officials.
In the last two board meetings, the governing board approved sending out layoff notices to over 270 employees and eliminating over 110 retirement or vacancy positions.
The district aims to save $25 million or more through the layoffs and other cost-cutting measures, said Patrick Jensen, the district’s chief financial officer.
Amid strong opposition from employees and unions to the reduction plan, district officials said at Wednesday’s school board meeting that no final decision has been made. The district is issuing preliminary notices to all potentially impacted employees in accordance with the state law.
California’s Education Code requires school districts to notify impacted employees before March 15.
The decision-making process takes time, such as holding hearings and discussing with different unions, said David Chavez, the district’s chief human resources officer.
“We’re not only looking at different vacancies and (retirements) and things of that nature, but we’re also looking at programs, we’re looking at reducing vendor contracts,” Chavez told The Fresno Bee.
The actual bumping and layoff process won’t kick off until mid-May, Chavez said.
“That’s a seniority-based process, where the employee with the most seniority would either move into a role in the same classification, if they have more seniority than somebody else in that classification, and if they don’t, then they would be able to bump an individual with less seniority in that classification they held before,” Chavez said at Wednesday’s board meeting.
“If, for some reason, they’re still the least senior, that process would continue until they’re unfortunately in no positions. If that happens, that employee is then subject to layoff.”
It’s unclear how many employees, exactly, will be laid off. The bumping and layoff process goes all the way through June 30 and even into the start of July, district officials said.
The alternative vacancy might exist in different departments or at different compensation levels, according to a press release Fresno Unified issued previously.
“I just want to reiterate that our commitment to employees who currently have a fully benefited position is that we would offer them a fully benefited position,” Chavez said. “They could be in another department, in a different pay scale, different things of that nature, but they would have full benefits.”
Chavez said employees reassigned to another role will be able to keep their years of service, and will be on the re-employment list if their previous position becomes available.
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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.