FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) — Voters in Fresno County will cast their vote to see who will advance to the November ballot for the next Fresno Office of Education superintendent: incumbent Dr. Michelle Cantwell-Copher, Dr. Eimear O’Brien and Dr. Johnny Alvarado.<\/p>\n
Under California’s jungle primary system, the top two vote-getters will advance to the November general election.<\/p>\n
RELATED: Fresno County Office of Education race heads to June primary with 3 candidates<\/a><\/p>\n Dr. Michelle Cantwell-Copher is seeking a second term. Her priorities include school safety partnerships with law enforcement, improving reading and math scores, and reducing costs.<\/p>\n Cantwell-Copher has faced criticism over the closure of Kids Caf\u00e9, which was opened by her former boss and county superintendent, Jim Yovino, who now supports her opponent, Dr. Eimear O’Brien.<\/p>\n Dr. Eimear O’Brien, a former Clovis Unified superintendent, is focused on improving reading skills, increasing family engagement and investing in student learning.<\/p>\n She is also endorsed by Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer.<\/p>\n O’Brien has faced criticism over decisions made during her time at Clovis Unified, including pandemic reopening timelines for schools and spending too much money building Clovis South.<\/p>\n Dr. Johnny Alvarado, most recently an assistant superintendent in Parlier Unified, says he wants to strengthen classroom management, family engagement and academic success.<\/p>\n He has faced scrutiny in recent weeks<\/a> over his work history and later acknowledged he was not truthful<\/a> in a previous interview with Action News about his past employment.<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2026 KFSN-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) — Voters in Fresno County will cast their vote to see who will advance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[141492,126586,112,131501,114,113,126587,141414,45070,1997,141491],"class_list":["post-344280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-141492","tag-eimear-obrien","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-county-office-of-education","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-johnny-alvarado","tag-michelle-cantwell-copher","tag-primary-election","tag-schools","tag-superintendent-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344280","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=344280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}