the New York Post<\/a> \u2014 Board President Veva Islas confirmed Thursday that the resolution will return to the floor at the board\u2019s first May meeting, and that she plans to move it for a vote herself.<\/p>\n\u201cSEDA has been agendized. It\u2019s coming before us the first meeting in May,\u201d Islas said. \u201cI plan to make a motion to approve it. My colleagues will be required to vote up or down.\u201d<\/p>\n
The practical meaning of the vote is narrow but potentially powerful. It is not a referendum on whether SEDA gets built \u2014 the city council will decide that. It is a vote on whether Fresno Unified\u2019s superintendent will be allowed to say, on the record, that the project threatens her district.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Without board authorization, Her cannot communicate the district\u2019s opposition to the city council, the mayor, or other public agencies, according to Islas. With it, she can organize \u2014 publicly and formally \u2014 against a project that could reshape enrollment across the district for decades.<\/p>\n
The FTA, the district\u2019s teachers union, is pushing to make sure trustees can\u2019t punt again.<\/p>\n
In a letter delivered Tuesday to Islas, union President Manuel Bonilla wrote that \u201coutside political pressure\u201d may have influenced the February tabling vote, and that the community \u201cdeserves to know where each trustee stands.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA matter with this level of long-term impact on district enrollment, school closures, financial stability, and the future of public education in Fresno should not remain indefinitely tabled without each elected trustee being required to cast a vote on the record,\u201d Bonilla wrote.<\/p>\n
In an interview, Bonilla said the union\u2019s members were energized by the prospect of a forced public vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf SEDA is good for Fresno Unified, then vote yes. If it\u2019s harmful, vote no,\u201d he said. \u201cBut refusing to vote at all, after behind-the-scenes political pressure, raises serious concerns about what is really influencing this board\u2019s decisions. The troubling part is we\u2019re not guessing. The district\u2019s own data shows this plan is likely to deepen enrollment loss and put even more pressure on our schools.\u201d<\/p>\n
Islas said she is working with staff to determine whether the resolution will return as a stand-alone agenda item or be bundled into the consent calendar, as it was in February. If it returns via consent, she said, she will pull it for full board debate.<\/p>\n
The pressure on trustees has built steadily since Fresnoland reported last week that Dyer sent text messages to at least four trustees on Feb. 24 \u2014 the day before the board\u2019s tabling vote \u2014 warning that FUSD opposition to SEDA would damage the city-district relationship.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me be clear,\u201d Dyer wrote to Trustee Andy Levine the evening before the vote. \u201cIf the FUSD takes a formal position against SEDA the relationship between the city and FUSD will be damaged. No way around it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an identical message to multiple trustees, Dyer wrote that FUSD opposition \u201cwould open the door for the mayor to start engaging on educational issues which I have avoided in the past when media ask for my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dyer later told Fresnoland the messages were \u201ca friendly reminder,\u201d not a threat.<\/p>\n
Dyer could not be reached for comment Friday.<\/p>\n
In a separate development Thursday, Trustee Claudia Cazares resigned from the board\u2019s bylaws committee just before the committee\u2019s noon meeting, Islas confirmed. Cazares was one of the four trustees who voted in February to table the SEDA resolution, and one of the trustees who received Dyer\u2019s texts. The reason for her resignation from the committee was not immediately clear.<\/p>\n
Cazares did not respond to a request for comment Friday.<\/p>\n
An assessment by Her\u2019s office found that the 9,000-acre project would \u201credistribute students away from existing Fresno Unified neighborhoods, accelerating enrollment decline rather than supporting sustainable, equitable growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Islas has her way, every trustee will have to say yes or no to SEDA in May.<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What’s at stake: The FUSD board is about to take a vote on the future of the school…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[15,112,114,113,27833],"class_list":["post-276237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-education","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-seda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276237","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=276237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}