{"id":272848,"date":"2026-04-17T17:11:42","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/272848\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T17:11:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T17:11:42","slug":"fresno-unified-enrollment-drops-by-nearly-1000-see-how-that-compares-to-previous-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/272848\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresno Unified enrollment drops by nearly 1,000. See how that compares to previous years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Fresno Unified \u2014 the state\u2019s third-largest school district \u2014 saw a drop in student enrollment of nearly 1,000 ahead of the 2025-26 school year, according to data released from the California Department of Education on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The district\u2019s annual enrollment report totaled 70,163 students for the current school year. That compares to 71,151 last year, or a decline of 988 students.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Annual CDE data going back to 2014 shows declines for all but three years. The largest drop previously was 962 students from 2019-20 to 2020-21, a period marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. This was followed by another significant drop of 898 students from 2022-23 to 2023-24.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Funding for California school districts is largely determined by average daily attendance, and <a href=\"https:\/\/bellwether.org\/publications\/navigating-declining-enrollment\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Bellwether;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Bellwether&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Bellwether<\/a> \u2014 a nonprofit focused on education policy \u2014 says funding is directly impacted by enrollment changes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cOften, declining enrollment prompts budget realignments to ensure the number of staff, schools, and programs are aligned with enrollment,\u201d the nonprofit says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In February, trustees approved plans to send <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fresnobee.com\/news\/local\/education-lab\/article314842244.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:layoff notices;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;layoff notices&quot;}\" class=\"link \">layoff notices<\/a> to 274 employees, though the decision won\u2019t be finalized until next year\u2019s budget is approved in June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresno Unified \u2014 the state\u2019s third-largest school district \u2014 saw a drop in student enrollment of nearly 1,000&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[118319,3636,118318,112,114,113,14569,37318,74060],"class_list":{"0":"post-272848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-annual-enrollment","9":"tag-california-department-of-education","10":"tag-enrollment-changes","11":"tag-fresno","12":"tag-fresno-headlines","13":"tag-fresno-news","14":"tag-fresno-unified","15":"tag-school-district","16":"tag-student-enrollment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272848","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=272848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}