Chico State University followed proper procedures in how it handled the sex investigation of suspended professor David Stachura and its lengthy aftermath, including not informing faculty and students that Stachura allegedly threatened gun violence on campus, an independent investigation has found.
The 20-page report by San Diego lawyer Nancy Aeling was released late Monday afternoon by the university, nearly a year after EdSource first reported on findings that Stachura had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student and allegedly threatened to shoot two colleagues who cooperated in an investigation of the matter, and was later named the university’s Outstanding Professor of the 2020-21 school year.
“The university acted consistently with policy by not notifying the Chico State community of Stachura’s alleged threats of violence,” Aeling wrote. Stachura, according to court testimony by his estranged wife, had told her of his intent to kill two professors who cooperated in the 2021 investigation that found he had an inappropriate relationship, which included sex in his office, with a student. Separately, a biology lecturer revealed — and later testified — that Stachura spoke to her about committing a shooting in the biology department.
Aeling did not respond to a phone message left at her office on Monday.
The report was also not critical of the university’s Campus Violence Consultation Team, which recommended that Stachura be allowed to return to campus after investigating the alleged threats against his colleagues and “did not find that he posed a threat of violence.”
A member of that team, Chico State Police Chief Christopher Nicodemus, testified in a court proceeding earlier this year that he did not agree with the team’s findings.
“There were concerns” about Stachura, Nicodemus said on the stand in a legal proceeding that resulted in a judge issuing a three-year workplace violence restraining order against Stachura that bars him from going on campus or near the people he threatened.
Nicodemus said on the stand that he believed “it’s safer to err on the side of caution” when making a threat assessment. He added that it would have been better to have mistakenly fired Stachura than live with the aftermath of a violent event.
Aeling wrote in the report that she did not consider “the appropriateness of Stachura’s actions or communications with his colleagues nor his colleagues’ responses to Stachura and his continued presence on campus, or the overall effectiveness of the procedures or policies in place to address the situation presented by (his) actions or communications.” Rather, the report was limited to “whether (the) responses were reasonable given the information available at the time and were consistent with the policies and procedures governing them.” The report makes no policy recommendations.
A faculty union officer ripped the report Monday night.
“It’s absolutely demoralizing and heartbreaking that no one has taken any accountability for what has happened,’’ Lindsay Briggs, a public health professor and a California Faculty Association Chico Campus Executive Board member, wrote in an email to EdSource.
“This is why survivors of violence don’t speak out and why we don’t feel safe at our jobs; because we’re not. No one cares to do anything other than offer empty platitudes.” Eleven “months of hand wringing and we’re no better off than we were before,” she said.
Gordon Wolfe, a professor who turned over court records about Stachura’s alleged threat to kill witnesses, said in a phone interview Monday evening that he received an email from Chico State saying that Aeling wanted to interview him, but that “she never followed up.”
Stachura remains on administrative leave as the university finishes an investigation of his alleged threat to kill witnesses in the sex case. He was recently ordered by a judge to pay more than $64,000 for the legal fees of a lecturer he unsuccessfully sued for libel. His lawyer did not respond to a request to comment on Aeling’s report.
In a prepared statement that accompanied the report’s release, Chico State President Stephen Perez said, “I appreciate the thorough review and the opportunity to consider our practices moving forward.”
Without mentioning her by name, the report found that former Chico State President Gayle Hutchinson considered the sex case against Stachura as well as the alleged threats he made when approving “Stachura’s promotion to” full professor in 2021. Hutchinson found him “to be a highly productive citizen of the academy, with a strong record of teaching, service and research,” the report states.
Hutchinson retired in June. She could not be immediately reached Monday night.
Susy Aguilar, a literacy tutor recruited by the nonprofit Oakland REACH, meets with this small group of students for 30 minutes daily, providing science-based literacy instruction at Manzanita SEED Elementary in Oakland Unified.
Credit: The Oakland REACH
Initial findings from a study of a closely watched Oakland Unified program that recruits parents and neighbors as tutors show intriguing potential for other low-income school districts struggling to teach kids to read.
By training recruits in phonics and structured literacy and assigning them to K-2 classrooms, the initiative offers Black and Latino parents and others a direct stake in seeing their neighborhood children achieve the skills to read.
Through a partnership with The Oakland REACH, an innovative nonprofit serving low-income Black and Hispanic families, the district has been able to mine what the study calls a “pool of untapped talent” —parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, “many of them poorly served by public schools themselves and now brim with passion for addressing systemic problems in public education,” author Travis Pillow wrote in an accompanying analysis.
“People within our own community as a whole make the best tutors because we connect directly with the children,” Susy Aguilar, a tutor at Manzanita Seed Elementary, which her daughter attends, said in a video about the program. “Just believing in the children and making them believe in themselves is one of the most important things for me.”
Irene Segura, a literacy coach with Oakland Unified, said students look forward to meeting with their tutors, and the feelings are mutual.
“When their students have those light-bulb moments of putting those decodable sounds together and putting that into words, it makes them happy and more determined to continue their work,” she said.
The Oakland REACH was highlighted this week in a separate report that summarized effective tutoring practices. Accelerate, a nonprofit organization that seeks to expand high-impact tutoring programs into public schools nationwide, cited The Oakland REACH’s tutor recruitment efforts and its partnership with Oakland Unified.
The Oakland REACH is one of 31 grantees whose tutoring work Accelerate has funded. In 2022, The Oakland REACH received an unrestricted $3 million gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott to continue its work.
The research by the Center for Reinventing Public Education also documented significant obstacles facing the program, concluding that paying the tutors a competitive wage to retain them in high-cost Oakland will be difficult. And gains in reading scores in the first year were uneven among schools and between kindergarten and first and second grades. Figuring out why is the next step.
The district, through a literacy training nonprofit, FluentSeeds, trained the tutors in the district’s phonics-based curriculum and gave them a specific goal: work in small groups with every child struggling with the elemental skill of decoding for a half-hour each day, at least three times each week. In its smoothest form, teachers communicated daily with tutors, who worked regularly with coaches, when they weren’t pulled aside to substitute teach.
The analysis of 84 tutors employed by Oakland Unified found considerable variability in student improvement. The first-year study, in 2022-23, found positive outcomes in a district where only 33% of students overall, 23% of Hispanic students, and 18% of Black students scored at standard in English language arts on the 2023 state Smarter Balanced test. The initiative is still a work in progress.
Gains made by students who were tutored in small groups were comparable to gains by students who were taught the same curriculum by classroom teachers, as measured by progress on the iReady reading assessment in the 2022-23 school year.
Students who received tutoring from an early literacy tutor made statistically significant gains on the iReady test compared with students who did not receive any instruction from the tutoring curriculum. The difference was nearly a year’s worth of reading growth; students without the training made less than half of a year’s standard reading achievement.
But the large gains in kindergarten between tutored and nontutored students were not matched in first and second grades on the iReady reading assessments. With 100% reading improvement, the expected rate of yearly gain, improvementranged from79% to 188% among low-income schools.
“Their average growth is lower than we would expect or hope for. But growth doesn’t just reflect the impact of tutors,” said Ashley Jochim, consulting principal of the Center for Reinventing Public Education and co-author of the study. “Tutors are only one part of the literacy instruction puzzle.”
Factors in and outside the school affect results, she said, including students’ chronic absences, which were among the highest in California since the pandemic. The number of tutors within a school, how they were deployed, the size of tutoring groups and scheduling are among the variables.
Another factor is the uneven support of principals, Jochim said. Among tutors responding to a survey, only half reported daily communication with classroom teachers, and fewer said they were in regular communication with school staff leading the literacy work.
“There are gaps; this is where greater attention to quality and fidelity in tutoring is important,” Jochim said.
Added Lakisha Young, founder and CEO of The Oakland REACH, “We’ve helped the district add a bunch of tutors. But if we don’t work on these other conditions to bring everything into alignment, then it’s going to make the work harder.”
Jochim said that the center will spend the last year of a two-year grant collecting better and more data to determine how differences among schools affected outcomes. The range of reading skills widens in first and second grades, complicating the ability to compare the progress of tutored students and nontutored students, she said.
The secret of success
Jochim said the most instructive lesson from the pilot is that having more adults in the classroom allows for differentiation of instruction.
“For so long in this country, we have assumed that a single teacher working alone in their classroom could sufficiently differentiate instruction for kids in literacy and math,” she said. That’s difficult, she explained, in a kindergarten class where some students are reading for comprehension while others are struggling to decode one-syllable words.
Jochim said there is “no question that this project is the right approach.”
“My thinking has evolved,” she said. “Differentiation of instructions is the ticket to better outcomes — if we can figure out the specifics.”
Susanna Loeb, a Stanford University education researcher and authority on tutoring, is bullish as well. The Oakland REACH’s partnership with the district and FluentSeeds matters, she said, because it treats tutoring as “part of a broader and coherent approach to improving literacy, not simply an ‘add-on’ program.”
“I’m excited,” she added, “what this systemic approach can offer for communities across the country.”
Dilemma over adequate pay
The level of pay may also determine if the tutoring initiative succeeds. The district pays tutors $16 to $18 per hour, plus benefits, which Young had to lobby the district for. Tutors who responded to the survey cited low pay as the biggest disincentive to the job, and it is likely a factor in why only five of the 11 tutors placed last spring returned to the job this fall.
Young acknowledged that pay appears to be the biggest obstacle to sustainability. It is a difficult issue because, under the district labor contract, bumping up the pay significantly will run into the pay level for a para-educator, which requires more education than a high-school degree. Young is exploring other options to fill the income gap, such as a retention bonus.
Roots in the pandemic
The Oakland REACH incubated the concept of community-trained tutors in the Covid summer of 2020. Parents frustrated by the failures of remote learning had cited reading instruction as their top need, so Young hired the first group of tutors. Buoyed by their success, she began working closely with the district to make early-grade reading tutoring its priority as well once schools reopened.
The Oakland REACH recruited the first group of 16 “literacy liberators,” handing out fliers on school grounds and going door-to-door in the fall of 2022 and partnered with FluentSeeds to train them in early 2023. Many had to be convinced they could do the job; the minimum requirement was a high-school degree.
According to the report, the first recruits included a young man who had seen family members struggle with reading comprehension and a retired teacher who “expressed alarm” that he had mistaught young readers and wanted to make amends through the science of reading — instruction grounded in structured literacy and evidence-based practices.
Oakland Unified hired 11 of them to fill tutoring vacancies and placed them in the classrooms last spring.
“Six months into the school year, Oakland had still not filled tutor positions in schools that served the most marginalized students. Oakland REACH was really critical to filling the gaps and ensuring the kids who most need this help are able to get it,” Jochim said.
A second cohort of 20 tutors began work in the fall of 2023.
Extra training with leadership skills
FluentSeeds gives all of Oakland’s K-2 literacy tutors a four-day course in SIPPS — Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words — the district’s early-stage intervention program. The subset of tutors that The Oakland REACH recruited for “literacy liberator fellowships” took an additional eight, two-hour sessions that provided background in the science of reading and focused on building student mindsets and tutors’ roles as leaders and advocates.
“We bring in a social-emotional component of what it means to be a teacher in Oakland teaching students that are behind, and how does that make them feel?” said Emily Grunt, program director for FluentSeeds, who has led the Oakland training.
One tutor characterized the fellowship as “life-changing.” The report described a session, offered by Decoding Dyslexia CA, in which fellows attempted to read a passage from Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild,” in which letters were changed to simulate the experience of a child with a learning disability. The passage became unreadable.
“Maybe you’re just not trying,” the trainer told the fellows, projecting the hurtful response that many students with dyslexia are told.
A model for other districts?
Interest in the program is spreading. The Oakland REACH held a conference on the tutoring model that attracted representatives from 14 nonprofits nationwide. Another conference is planned for the spring. The Oakland REACH has created a readiness assessment to determine if groups have the leadership capacity, organizational strength, funding and strong ties with the community.
“We only can work with people who have a certain level of readiness to be able to push this forward because it’s going to be really tricky,” she cautioned. “If you’re not used to working with your district at all, your head’s going to explode starting this out.”
Absentee rates in five districts cumulatively increased 22% after immigration raids in the Central Valley earlier this year.
Raids increase stress levels in school communities, making it difficult for students to learn.
Fewer students in class means less funding for schools, which rely on average daily attendance to pay for general expenses.
Immigration raids in California’s Central Valley earlier this year caused enough fear to keep nearly a quarter of the students in five districts home from school, according to a report released Monday by Stanford University.
The study evaluated daily student attendance in the districts over three school years and found a 22% increase in absences after immigration raids in the region in January and February.
Empty seats in classrooms impact student education and reduce districts’ funding for general expenses, which are tied to average daily attendance. The financial losses are especially difficult now because districts are already grappling with lost funding due to declining enrollment.
“The first and most obvious interpretation of the results is that students are missing school, and that means lost learning opportunities,” said Thomas Dee, a Stanford professor of education and author of the report. “But I think these results are a harbinger of much more than that. I mean, they’re really a leading indicator of the distress that these raids place on families and children.”
The raids in the Central Valley began in January as part of “Operation Return to Sender.” U.S. Border Patrol agents targeted immigrants at gas stations and restaurants, and pulled over farmworkers traveling to work, observers reported.
All five districts analyzed in the study — Bakersfield City School District, Southern Kern Unified, Tehachapi Unified, Kerman Unified and Fresno Unified — are in or near agricultural regions that were impacted by the operation. The districts closest to the raids had the highest absentee rates, Dee said.
It is unclear how many people were actually arrested during the four-day operation. Border Patrol officials have claimed 78 people were arrested, while observers say it was closer to 1,000, according to the study.
Raids keep kids out of school
But whatever the number of arrests, fewer students in these districts attended school in the wake of the raids. The results of the study also suggest that absentee rates in California schools could continue to increase if the raids persist.
In the Stanford report, Dee cited studies, including one he co-wrote, that found that prior instances of immigration enforcement have negatively impacted grade retention, high school completion, test scores and anxiety disorders. The climate of fear and mistrust caused by the raids impacts children even if their parents are not undocumented, according to the report.
An estimated 1 in 10, or 1 million, children in California have at least one undocumented parent. And while most of the children of undocumented parents in the United States are U.S. citizens, approximately 133,000 California children are undocumented themselves, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Of the more than 112,500 students attending the five districts studied, almost 82,000 are Hispanic, according to state data.
Not all districts impacted by the raids were studied, however. Big Local News, a journalism lab at Stanford University, approached multiple districts to request data. These five districts responded, according to Dee.
The school’s youngest students were the most likely to miss school because of immigration raids, according to the report. That trend is expected to continue because younger children are more likely to have undocumented parents, Dee said. Parents are also more protective of their younger children, he said.
“I think it just makes sense that if you’re concerned about family separation, it is a uniquely sharp concern if your kids are particularly young,” Dee said.
Family separation has been a constant fear since the Central Valley raids, agrees Mario Gonzalez, executive director of the Education & Leadership Foundation. The nonprofit provides immigration support and educational services to the community, including tutoring in 30 Fresno Unified schools.
Gonzalez said the foundation saw a decrease in the number of families participating in onsite services, such as legal consultations, beginning with the first reported immigration raids in Bakersfield in January, and a decrease in school attendance.
High school students told the foundation staff that their friends were afraid to come to school.
Fresno Unified attendance dipped
Attendance in Fresno Unified — the state’s third-largest district — dropped immediately after the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Donald Trump, said Noreida Perez, the district’s attendance and social emotional manager. Based on internal calculations, a decline in average daily attendance continued until March, with attendance rates decreasing by more than 4% in one week in February, compared to the same time in 2024.
Families reported keeping their children home because they were afraid that immigration enforcement officials would be allowed on campus or that parents would be unsafe traveling to and from school for drop-off and pickup, Perez said.
“There was a lot of fear during that time,” she said. “There’s a lot of stress that’s associated with the threats of something like this happening.”
Families concerned about sending their children to school have reached out to the Education & Leadership Foundation to ask how their kids can continue to receive services, including bilingual instruction, reading and math intervention, and mentoring. Some wanted to learn about the district’s virtual academy, which Superintendent Misty Her had promoted during her home visits to address increased absenteeism.
The fear of immigration operations has also impacted the students who attend classes.
“If a student is worried about this happening to their parents or to somebody that they love, it makes it really hard to focus on learning or to be present with their peers or with their teacher,” said Perez, who is also a licensed clinical social worker. “If it feels like I might not be safe at school, or I don’t know what I’m going to come home to, that supersedes my ability to really focus and learn.”
Compensating schools
Ongoing declining enrollment is causing financial pressure in many school districts. In the 2024-25 school year, enrollment statewide declined by 31,469 students, or 0.54%, compared to last year. The previous school year, attendance declined by 0.25%, according to state data. Immigration raids could make a bad situation worse.
The issue is so concerning for school districts that the California Legislature is considering a bill that would allow the state to fund districts for the loss of daily state attendance revenue if parents keep their children at home out of fear of a federal immigration raid in their neighborhood.
Assembly Bill 1348, authored by Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, D-Delano, would allow the state to credit a district with the attendance numbers and funding they would have received had there not been immigration enforcement activity in their community.
To receive compensation, a district will have to provide data attributing a decline in attendance in a school — of at least 10% — to fear of federal immigration enforcement. The district must also provide remote learning as an option to families who keep their children home for this reason.
“When attendance drops, funding disappears, and when funding disappears, all students suffer — regardless of immigration status,” said Bains in a statement after the Assembly passed the bill 62-13 on June 2.
John Fensterwald and Emma Gallegos contributed to this report.
Despite statewide efforts, California is still struggling to support the personal and educational needs of its students, according to the 2024 California Children’s Report Card conducted by the organization Children Now, which “grades the State on its ability to support better outcomes for kids” and evaluates progress made on California policies and investments.
“California has failed to significantly improve outcomes for kids, allowing unacceptable and economic disparities to stagnate and in many cases grow,” Ted Lempert, Children Now’s president, wrote in a letter included in the report.
“What’s particularly disturbing is that California continues to trail far behind other states on a number of important indicators of child well-being. Despite our relatively high tax burden, our progressive leanings, and our enviable 5th largest economy in the world, California is far from a leader when it comes to kids. That’s not only a threat to our state’s collective future, but to the entire country as well since California is so often a bellwether for the nation.”
Children’s health
Among the health categories assessed, “health insurance” received the highest grade, A-minus. Meanwhile, “birthing health,” “preventative screenings,” “supporting mental health,” “preventing substance abuse” and “health care access and accountability, all received grades in the D range.
The rest of the health categories — including “environmental health and justice,” “oral health care” and “relationships and sexual health” — all received grades in the C range.
Additionally, the report noted that “while many states and municipalities across the country have declared racism as a public health crisis, California has yet to do so.”
According to the report, “children’s poor health outcomes are largely driven by racism at the intersection of poverty, sexual orientation, gender, and geography.”
Children’s education
Of the 12 topics under education, none earned a grade in the A range. Here’s how the report assessed the state on its education:
C-minus for child care.
B-plus for preschool and transitional kindergarten.
B-minus for early care and education workforce.
D for early intervention and special education.
C-minus for education for dual language and English learners.
C-plus for funding.
B for expanded learning programs
D for science, technology, engineering and math education.
C for educator pipeline, retention and diversity.
D for school climate: connections with adults on campus.
C for “school climate: discipline and attendance.
B-minus for higher education.
“California is investing record amounts in public education, yet struggles to effectively support students, especially those who need the most help,” the report reads.
It added that the state’s education system “ranks 43rd of 50 states of outcome gaps by race and ethnicity.”
Support from family
In terms of family support, “voluntary evidence-based home visiting” earned a C-minus, while in “paid family leave,” the state received a B-minus. “Income assistance for low-income families” was given a B.
“Children’s well-being is fueled by good health, enriching learning opportunities, and positive and nurturing relationships with adults. Both adult and child well-being can be undermined by unmet basic needs, economic hardship, social isolation, and stress,” according to the report.
“Throughout the pandemic, California made positive policy changes to bolster families with key supports, even as federal funding withered away,” the report read. “However, too often, families with young children are an afterthought in California policy.”
Child welfare in California
None of the child welfare categories garnered an A or B.
Instead, the state earned a C for “home stability and enduring relationships” and a C-plus in “health care for kids in foster care.”
Meanwhile, the state earned a D in both education supports for students in foster care and transitions to adulthood.
“For children and youth who cannot remain safely at home and must enter foster care, the State must ensure access to stable and nurturing foster homes, trauma-informed services, and targeted, high-quality educational supports to help them heal and thrive,” the report states.
Cross-sector issues facing California children
In terms of “cross-sector” issues, both “food security” and “cradle-to-career data systems” received a B-minus, while support for LGBTQ+ youth received a C-plus, “decriminalization of youth” received a D-plus and support for unaccompanied homeless youth landed a D-minus.
“While all of the issues in the “Report Card” are interrelated, the topics in this section have especially strong implications across multiple sectors and systems,” the report read.
“A whole-child approach to supporting kids incorporates services that meet young people where they’re at and address the many factors that are needed to help them thrive.”
Bob Nelson, outgoing superintendent of Fresno Unified School District
Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr
In almost seven years of superintendency, Bob Nelson focused on “grow-our-own” initiatives that include 18 teacher pipeline programs for Fresno Unified students, aspiring teachers and current educators.
Seventy-nine percent of new teachers joining Fresno Unified come through one of the district’s teacher pipeline programs, but there is no “similar thing on the leadership side,” said Nelson, the district’s outgoing superintendent. There’s no pipeline program to recruit, retain or support educators or school leaders hoping to become district administrators.
In summer 2023, a cohort of 19 district leaders, most of whom are people of color, graduated from the doctoral program at San Diego State — a result of collaboration between the university and school district which has ignited Nelson’s vision to develop a “grow-our-own” administrator program in the Fresno and broader Central San Joaquin Valley area.
Nelson says that the cohort of administrators graduating from San Diego State is one of the highlights of his superintendency as well as the reason for leaving Fresno Unified for a tenure-track position at California State University, Fresno.
Fresno Unified’s outgoing Superintendent Bob Nelson and interim Superintendent Misty Her Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr
Fresno State offers a doctoral program in educational leadership, but Nelson wants to strengthen it to draw more Fresno and Central Valley leaders into a Fresno-centered program that can develop administrators for the region.
“I feel it’s my responsibility to go and try and build a cadre of leaders here locally that can come and lead Valley schools,” Nelson said in a sit-down with EdSource in May.
On May 3, the Fresno Unified school board appointed Misty Her, the district’s deputy superintendent, to lead the district on an interim basis while a national search for a permanent replacement is conducted. Her started the interim superintendency on May 8 with Nelson moving into an advisory role until his last day on July 31.
Ahead of his last day, Nelson talked about his seven-year tenure as the leader of the state’s third-largest district and the importance of the new role he’s about to embark on.
Why leave now?
“I’m leaving because I feel really comfortable leaving the district in the hands of my deputy (Her). (I’m) stepping aside so that the first woman in 151 years can come and lead the district,” Nelson said. “It’s time. Leaving on my own volition feels good; I mean, that’s powerful.”
‘Pinnacle of my career’
“Serving as the superintendent in the district where I initially taught elementary school and first served as a leader has been the pinnacle of my career thus far,” he said in his Jan. 22 resignation announcement.
Prior to his appointment as superintendent, Nelson had served the district for over 23 years, holding various positions, including teacher, vice principal, principal, human resources administrator and chief of staff, according to the school district.
What is greatest accomplishment as superintendent?
Nelson said he is most proud of the “visible changes” across the district, including career technical education (CTE), a guaranteed college admissions program, an increase in district-sponsored scholarships, more diverse staff and the pace of student growth.
CTE pathways
“When I came into the district, people were running for the board on a platform that there were no college/career options for kids,” he said. “I think that’s changed demonstrably.”
The changes, he said, include: the heavy truck and diesel maintenance facility and the pharmacology school at Duncan Polytechnical High School, opening the sports medicine complex and setting up an agriculture pathway at Sunnyside High School, and buying land at Chandler Air Force Base to train private pilots and to teach people to fix planes, making the public service pathway — police, fire, EMT — out of Roosevelt High School.
Other accomplishments Nelson mentioned include: offering heating, ventilation and air conditioning certifications at Fresno High School; building teacher pipelines at Hoover and five other high schools, opening a law pathway at Bullard High School, and expanding social justice at Edison High School.
“Kids have access to more than they’ve ever had over the course of seven and a half years,” he said.
Bulldog Bound
Nelson developed a partnership with Fresno State to offer Bulldog Bound Guaranteed Admissions, which provides students college and career prep throughout their entire high school career as well as a guarantee that, once they graduate, they’ll have a spot at Fresno State.
“I was on the front end of authoring the Bulldog Bound initiative in collaboration with Fresno State, making sure every single one of our kids has guaranteed enrollment,” he said.
A foundation
During Nelson’s tenure, Fresno Unified also established the Foundation for Fresno Unified Schools, which now has a $20 million endowment that funds up to $800,000 in scholarships annually — “which is more than we’ve ever given away,” he said.
Diversity
Nelson recalls that in 2017, only two of district’s nearly 100 schools were led by Black principals — although African American students made up at least 8% of the student population. That’s no longer true. Now with over 10 Black principals, school leadership is a more accurate representation of the student enrollment.
Nelson’s senior leadership team is much more diverse, he said, pointing out a rise in Hmong and Latino leaders as well.
“It’s true diversity,” Nelson said. “Every single year of my tenure, and actually several before I got in, the staffing is more reflective of the students that we serve. In every respect — teaching staff, leadership staff, professional staff, including classified personnel — it’s all more indicative of the students that we serve.”
Based on 2022-23 state data, more than 92% of Fresno Unified students are minorities.
“Kids need to see visual images of people who look like them, talk like them, sound like them, have their lived experience,” Nelson said.
A faster pace
Nelson said he is thankful for student academic growth, which outpaces the state’s.
Based on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP tests, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards statewide improved by 6.87% in English and 6.07% in math from 2015 to 2019.
While Fresno Unified is still below state percentages in students meeting standards, from 2015 to 2019, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards outpaced the state’s improvement — by 11% in English and 11.85% in math.
“If you only look at the bar of proficiency, we’re always behind,” Nelson said. “But we’re always gaining distance from standard at a rate that’s faster than other people across the state.”
Because of the pandemic, students statewide, including those in Fresno Unified, experienced learning loss that dropped test scores.
Fresno Unified scores increased by 0.96% and 2.49% in English and math, respectively, meaning students are again improving at a faster rate, as they were before the pandemic.
“The same thing (a faster pace of growth) is happening right now with chronic absenteeism (when students miss 10% or more days in one school year),” Nelson said. “Like we’re closing chronic absenteeism at a rate that’s faster than anybody.”
From the 2021-22 school year to the 2022-23 school year, Fresno Unified reduced chronic absences by 14.9% in contrast to the state’s 5% reduction.
“I’m really proud of that,” Nelson said.
Were all his goals met for the district?
“Our kids have needs that are greater (because they) come from abject poverty; you start from a different starting line,” Nelson said.
According to 2023-24 district data, 88% of students are living in disadvantaged circumstances.
“So, the level of systemic change that is needed to help kids thrive is just a higher, deeper, more robust level of change,” he said. “Did I crack that nut in its entirety? No. There’s always room for improvement.”
What does Misty Her inherit?
Fresno Unified’s outgoing superintendent, Bob Nelson, during his tenure, launched a literacy initiative aimed at getting every child to read by first grade.Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr
“What I am leaving, hanging over, is I launched this literacy initiative, wanting every child to read by first grade,” Nelson said.
In late May, the school district finalized the Every Child Is a Reader literacy plan, a comprehensive five-year plan to achieve first-grade reading proficiency for students, according to a media release.
“The actual digging in and observing the curriculum around that initiative is going to be left for my successor. That is something that’s being held over (for Misty Her),” Nelson said.“I think she is a stronger academic leader and will help move the literacy work in ways that I have not. (As an early learning teacher), she knows very clearly what it takes for kids to read, understands all the complexities of the science of reading — is it phonemics or is it whole language —and balancing those approaches to make sure that kids have what they need.”
How does superintendent experience help at Fresno State?
Nelson will join the educational leadership division at the Kremen School of Education and Human Development. Although he’s leaving K-12 education as a leader, he’ll take his experience and knowledge into the role at Fresno State, which, this year, accepted 2,150 Fresno Unified students — the highest number ever accepted.
If all the accepted students were to attend, Fresno Unified graduates would make up around 20% of the university’s enrollment, based on Fresno State enrollment data that shows over 2,800 FUSD alumni.
“Higher ed needs to better understand what’s going on in Fresno Unified,” Nelson said. “Understanding who we are and what we represent and what we’re trying to do, I think, is critical.”
In applying for the role at Fresno State, Nelson had to teach a lesson, in which he demonstrated his ability to bridge the gap between Fresno Unified and Fresno State, he said.
“I compared their mission, vision, core values and statement of purpose against the lived experiences of the district that they serve (Fresno Unified) and said, ‘If you’re going to say these things, then that has to mirror the lived experiences of the districts that you’re in,’” he said. “’I think I can help you get from here to here. I can bridge that gap.’”
Nelson’s responsibilities at Fresno State?
A tenure-track position will give Nelson the opportunity to continue serving Valley educators.
“I have master’s degree students who are probably teachers, working full time every day, that want to become vice principals and principals and then, potentially, district leaders and on and on … and then helping master’s students get their master’s projects completed too,” he said of the position.
Why back to the classroom?
Before becoming superintendent of Fresno Unified, Nelson taught at Fresno State and “loved every minute of it.”
“I’m really, really excited to just go back to teaching,” he said. “Almost every school counselor that we brought in our system (Fresno Unified) were my former students from Fresno State. You find the best leader, siphon them out and then try to get them into the places in the Valley where they can serve kids.”
What about the goal of a local ‘grow-our-own’ administrator program?
In 2021, Fresno Unified won an $8.2 million grant from the Wallace Foundation to develop and support a pipeline of equity-centered leaders with which the district developed a collaborative relationship with San Diego State. This led to the district’s first cohort of leaders matriculating through the doctorate program. The partnership allows Fresno Unified leaders and faculty — who model what the graduate students are looking to become — to teach the courses in Fresno.
Many of the district leaders who obtained their doctorate from San Diego State in 2023 are now teaching the new cohort of Fresno Unified administrators coming up behind them at San Diego State.
“San Diego State has a really robust infrastructure to take leaders and help them kind of go to the next level,” Nelson said. “Most of what San Diego State is doing is they’re taking existing leaders and getting them their doctorate, and those leaders are ending up in district positions. I’m not sure Fresno State is there yet.”
Nelson’s goal: grow and develop administrators through Fresno State in a way similar to the partnership at San Diego State.
Prior to 2018, Fresno State allowed Fresno Unified leaders and instructors to teach graduate-level courses to prospective leaders, according to Nelson. Now only Fresno State faculty can teach the courses.
“The tenure-track faculty members at Fresno State — the vast majority of them have an emphasis on higher ed, so perpetuating other collegiate leaders,” Nelson said.
“Meanwhile, there’re 150 districts that are all clamoring to find leaders.”
A local program geared toward leadership of K-12 schools and districts is also important to create a collaborative space for them, Nelson said.
“There’s people that I deeply respect in the Valley who also sit in the superintendency,” Nelson said. “I think of Todd Lile in Madera. I think of Yolanda (Valdez in Cutler-Orosi Joint Unified). And there’s no space for us to be together to jointly plan or even talk or collaborate because we’re in three different counties.”
That’s a problem, he said.
“There needs to be a structure by which people who are on the same journey in the same region can collaborate with one another,” he said. “I think Fresno State is uniquely positioned to be able to bring those leaders together. … If you’re in a cohort of people who are on the same journey and have the same goals and you’re trying to strive together, (such as) in your doctoral program, it matters.”
His goal to strengthen the program at Fresno State doesn’t quite fit into his role as professor, but he wants to build and support an effort to reach that goal.
“Fresno State has what’s called the Welty Center for Educational Leadership, and they organized that with the intent of doing exactly this work as a collaborative space for leaders across the Valley,” Nelson said. “(I’m) trying to use that Welty Center as a jumping off place to just provide support for leaders across all of the 150 districts that feed into Fresno State.
“There’s just a high degree of need, and the focus cannot be solely on higher ed. It has to focus on the K-12 experience.”
“I am not going to cop to that. I think that (narrative is) what I’m out to fix,” Nelson said. “I actually think leadership is not only critical, it is a wonderful blessing, and I need people to understand that. We have to change the counterculture narrative that leadership is not possible or not sustainable or a dead-end thing.
“Finding superintendents who actually want to serve is harder than it’s ever been, and there’s a lot of reasons why that’s a factor, but we have to actually push back against that.”
