![\"Fresno](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/file-image-fresno-high-school1839-134491335.jpg\")
The California Post reported this week that Fresno Unified School District continues to lose students at a rapid clip. Google Maps<\/p>\n
The district of more than 70,000 pupils has shed about 4,000 students in the past decade, with 4,000 more projected to leave in the next few years.<\/p>\n
That translates to the loss of about seven or eight average-size Fresno schools\u2019 worth of kids.<\/p>\n
Red alert.<\/p>\n
As Fresno and other districts grapple with declining student numbers and rising budget shortfalls, they should reform and right-size\u00a0their operations \u2013\u2013 not demand bailouts from taxpayers.<\/p>\n
![\"Mao](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mao-misty-major-california-school-136356216_1d0a02.jpg\")
Mao Misty Her is the superintendent of the Fresno Unified School District. Fresno Unified School District<\/p>\n
This may mean school closures, operational consolidations and reductions to administration and staff.<\/p>\n
It also means pushing back against unions \u2014 such as the voracious United Teachers Los Angeles \u2014\u00a0that press for (and often secure) far richer payouts than districts can realistically afford.<\/p>\n
Districts in LA, San Diego, Oakland, San Francisco and Long Beach are all among those bleeding students.<\/p>\n
Many districts, including Fresno\u2019s, blame the declines on slipping birth rates, families fleeing high-cost areas, lower rates of foreign immigration, and competition from charter schools, private schools and home schooling.<\/p>\n
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Given these trends, school boards need to reconfigure operations to be sustainable.<\/p>\n
They should also consider why they\u2019re losing students to charters, private schools and parent-teachers.<\/p>\n
The likely culprit: declining trust in schools that deprioritize policing \u2014 and by extension, student safety \u2014\u00a0while producing poor academic outcomes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In recent statewide testing, 48.8% of students scored \u201cproficient\u201d in English and just 37.3% showed a proficient grip of math.<\/p>\n
And in the large districts shedding enrollment? Mostly, the numbers are even worse.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time for another R: a reality check.<\/p>\n
In many of the state\u2019s large school districts, the status quo is earning a D or an F.<\/p>\n
Enrollment collapse, where it exists, should spark reform, ingenuity and recalibration \u2014 not requests for more tax dollars, tossed into a black hole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who knew the 3 R\u2019s might include \u201crelocation\u201d? Enrollment is tumbling in many large California school districts \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[7,8248,112,114,113,47,975,22334,16906,33434],"class_list":["post-423196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-california","tag-enrollment","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-opinion","tag-public-schools","tag-scores","tag-teachers-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423196","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=423196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}