![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/california_post_772\/05908709244cd06341943a5036086238.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
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’ 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\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/california_post_772\/674fe509e3d274136d6ddabc83ff0047.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
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’s, 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
Given these trends, school boards need to reconfigure operations to be sustainable.<\/p>\n
They should also consider why they’re 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 “proficient” 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’s time for another R: a reality check.<\/p>\n
In many of the state’s 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’s might include “relocation”? Enrollment is tumbling in many large California school districts \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[66734,112,114,76977,113,1447,17257,16722],"class_list":["post-426375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-california-post","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-high-school","tag-fresno-news","tag-fresno-unified-school-district","tag-school-closures","tag-school-districts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426375","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=426375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}