{"id":142190,"date":"2026-01-20T22:43:38","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T22:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/142190\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T22:43:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T22:43:38","slug":"how-many-students-has-fresno-unified-lost-in-the-last-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/142190\/","title":{"rendered":"How many students has Fresno Unified lost in the last decades?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This story is produced from an episode of KVPR\u2019s Central Valley Daily podcast. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kvpr.org\/podcast\/central-valley-daily\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Listen to all episodes here, and wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>. Central Valley Daily is supported by the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. If you have a story idea, email podcast@kvpr.org.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>FRESNO, Calif. \u2013 More than 500 teachers and staff with Fresno Unified recently accepted an early retirement deal. This comes at a time that the district has noted a declining enrollment of students \u2013 and a need to save on costs.<\/p>\n<p>Fresno Unified is the state&#8217;s third largest school district. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, it has lost 1,000<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ed-data.org\/district\/Fresno\/Fresno-Unified\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> students a year<\/a>, according to its superintendent Misty Her, who spoke with KVPR\u2019s Central Valley Daily podcast.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, the student enrollment at Fresno Unified is around 67,000 students. Since 2002, the district has lost 13,000 students, according to Her.<\/p>\n<p>She said with the declining rate of students, the district sought to save on costs by offering teachers early retirement deals. Attendance at schools is tied to school funding.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe early retirement was done to honor the work that our retirees have [put] into our district,\u201d Her said.<\/p>\n<p>Such an incentive had not been offered in more than 20 years. Her said it was made available to teachers ages 55 and older in what she described as a \u201cstrategic\u201d move.<\/p>\n<p>A total of 573 employees accepted the offer, according to Her. The district estimates saving roughly $56 million in costs over the next five years.<\/p>\n<p>Her said the district\u2019s aim is to match staffing levels to current student enrollment while managing employee transitions and preserving institutional knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have interim goals, interim guardrails. We have initiatives now that are going to be in alignment to those goals and guardrails,\u201d Her said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is produced from an episode of KVPR\u2019s Central Valley Daily podcast. Listen to all episodes here,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[8222,37810,891,8248,112,57009,114,113,14569,1447,71398,27853],"class_list":["post-142190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-decline","tag-central-valley-daily","tag-covid-19","tag-enrollment","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-city","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-fresno-unified","tag-fresno-unified-school-district","tag-mao-misty-her","tag-misty-her"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}