Around last November’s election, Nora Zaragoza-Yáñez and her husband worried about what would happen if they were detained by immigration enforcement officers and no one could care for their 6-year-old son. Zaragoza-Yáñez said their concern stems from intensified racial profiling from immigration enforcement across the U.S. and from their own frontline work in immigration advocacy.  They began having conversations about a…

After about two hours of closed-session discussion, the State Center Community College District board took no action, such as discipline or dismissal, against Chancellor Carole Goldsmith during a special meeting on Tuesday about her performance and future in the district. Two dozen people attended the in-person meeting and nearly 60 joined online in either support of Goldsmith continuing her tenure or dissent, calling for her immediate removal.

The Fresno City Council unanimously approved millions of dollars in funding for three homeless shelters, granting a reprieve to residents facing the prospect of returning to the streets this winter, and giving the city more time to fund long-term solutions.  The funding passed in a 6-0 vote, with Councilmember Tyler Maxwell absent from Thursday’s meeting. The city’s total investment is about $4.2 million, and it will fund the Valley Inn facility on 933 North Parkway Drive, the Travel Inn shelter on 1444 W.

A city ordinance passed earlier this year that will strongly limit the amount of smoke shops in Fresno by 2027 cleared a legal hurdle, and local leaders doubled down against the businesses. Fresno city leaders held a news conference on Wednesday morning to champion both the legal challenge’s dismissal from court, and to share updates on their goal to crack down on smoke shops illegally operating in the city.

Fresno Unified’s state testing scores haven’t looked great historically. For at least a decade, more than half of tested students have scored below state standards for English and math. But in Fresno Unified’s third year back to in-person classes since the pandemic began, there are pockets of improvement in California’s third-largest K-12 school district.  Every year, students in third through eighth grade, as well as 11th grade, take the…

Administrators at Sunnyside High School held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday morning celebrating the completion of a new health sciences building. The 13,251 square-foot building houses a collaborative space for students, a weight training room, sports medicine and performance labs and four classrooms. The facility will be home to the school’s Health Sciences Pathway classes, which allow students to earn certificates in athletic training, performing CPR and first aid. 

The City of Fresno’s LGBTQ+ community fund awarded $70,000 to seven organizations in its second cycle, this time using the city’s general fund rather than federal dollars.

This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter The Trump administration’s threat to cut federal funds to schools with race-based programs and a discrimination lawsuit prompted the Fresno Unified School District to restructure its academic support department for Black students. Starting with a name change in October, the African American Academic Acceleration department — still known as A4 — is now the Advancing Academic Acceleration & Achievement department.

The Trump administration isn’t done with its fight with Fresno and others over federal funding. On Friday morning, the U.S. Department of Justice appealed a preliminary injunction blocking federal agencies from stripping federal funding for local governments, including the City of Fresno. The funding was threatened after federal agencies determined local jurisdictions weren’t following President Donald Trump’s executive orders attacking diversity programs…

Fresno’s city and county leaders joined a collection of unhoused service partners at a Friday news conference to tout what they described as significant progress toward a new local partnership aimed at solving the region’s homelessness crisis. The news is a major narrative shift on homelessness. Historically, the two parties have butted heads on who is responsible for what when it comes to providing resources for the unhoused — with county officials claiming the issue is a city problem.

Has the Measure C stalemate been broken? Fresno County’s transportation policy board narrowly approved a plan Thursday evening to get a new version of Measure C, the current sales tax for roads and transit, on the November 2026 ballot – drawing fiery opposition from a small faction led by Supervisor Buddy Mendes. The plan – called the “high-priorities” alternative, would dedicate about 65% of the sales tax revenues to fix and improve local roads, with 25% towards public transit, reflecting the…

A seemingly straightforward approval from city leaders on Thursday marks the end to years of arduous discussion and planning among Tower District stakeholders over the future of their community. The Fresno City Council approved the newly drafted Tower District Specific Plan, setting new rules for design and land use decisions in the city’s historic neighborhood. The current Tower District Specific Plan…

California’s fifth-largest city is coming apart at the seams over 9,000 acres of land. Fresno’s planning politics are about to go nuclear. The Fresno Planning Commission approved the 45,000-home Southeast Development area (SEDA) Specific Plan in a historic 4-3 vote late Wednesday night after a packed house of residents told them to vote no. The mega-development faces a $3 billion funding shortfall, which drew roughly 150 worried residents to City Hall.

Beefed up training evaluation standards for Fresno Unified Superintendent Misty Her and the district’s teachers and staff took center stage at this week’s school board meeting. Specifically, the superintendent shared details on the district’s effort to make staff evaluations consistent across the district, including a dashboard that will track required and completed training for employees conducting evaluations. “Since COVID, training has been inconsistent and we have not had a way track which leaders have gotten training and which leaders have not gotten training,” said Her.

The Fresno City Council is set to vote Thursday on a second extension of a controversial trash deal that has prompted other waste haulers to demand rate increases of their own. The proposed agreement with Orange Avenue Disposal, a company owned by the politically-influential Caglia family, would extend its contract by one year to dispose of city residential waste to a facility near Kerman through 2035.

Chronic absenteeism at Fresno Unified dropped slightly, but remains almost double pre-pandemic levels, according to new state data. In the 2024-25 school year, 29.4% of Fresno Unified students in kindergarten through eighth grade were chronically absent — meaning students missed at least 10% of all school days in a year. Out of the 50,568 students, 14,866 were identified as chronically absent, representing an improvement of 0.9% from the previous year.

The Fresno County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved a move toward introducing regulations against kratom — a plant that has drawn scrutiny in recent years from state and federal health officials. The hearing preceded a joint news conference with Fresno City Councilmember Nelson Esparza and leading county health officials. Kratom is a tree native to southeast Asia with leaves used in some health supplements.

The Dyer administration has orchestrated a December showdown over the Southeast Development Area, pushing the 9,000-acre mega-project toward final approval despite a $3 billion infrastructure shortfall that has residents preparing for political war. Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer now has a potential majority at the Fresno City Council to approve the Clovis-sized mega-project, known colloquially as SEDA, according to interviews and statements by councilmembers at a Nov.

On this week's Fresnolandia podcast, Jordan and Danielle spoke with Mike McKeever, a regional planning expert based in Sacramento. He spent 12 years as CEO of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, the regional planning organization for the Sacramento metro. Prior to that, he spent his career in Portland as a planner and consultant. They discuss how Sacramento navigated competition for housing in the suburbs, whether approving too much housing can be a problem when trying to solve a housing crisis, and why cities and regions need to be more in touch with local demand. Spotify | Apple Podcasts

As immigration enforcement intensifies, California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a law that expands who can legally act as a temporary caregiver. The change comes at a time when nearly half (about 45%) of California’s children have at least one immigrant parent.

There’s a telephone pole at the intersection of Clinton and Warren Avenues in Fresno that Inez Zuniga can’t stop thinking about. It’s easy to speed past it, and a lot of people do, Zuniga says. But that intersection haunts Zuniga, who can’t drive down Clinton or Warren without thinking of the little boy who was hit and killed by drivers years ago at the location just minutes from Zuniga’s house.

Deep into Friday and Saturday nights in the Tower District, most people are beginning to end their day full of drinking and dancing by slowly sauntering off into the streets of the city’s hub for nightlife. For people like Laurie Montero, however, their night is about to begin. Montero, 47, is one of many street food vendors that adorn Olive Avenue with a mix of music, colorful lights and, above all else, some hot and ready food.

One Central Valley assemblymember said she’s preparing “for the worst,” with the future of Affordable Care Act subsidies — a key sticking point for most Democrats in negotiations to end the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history — still up in the air as lawmakers make last-minute deals to reopen the government. “I don’t know if people in Washington really understand, especially those in control, the level of increase in premiums and what that’s going to do to our families,” Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria, a Democrat and former Fresno City Councilmember currently representing Merced, told reporters on Monday.

Fresno Unified is hosting a community forum and asking for parent feedback on the restructuring of one of its equity departments. The district’s Office of African American Academic Acceleration, or A4 office, is morphing into the Office of Advancing Academic Acceleration & Achievement. Created in 2017, the A4 department was created to improve disparities in student performance and graduation rates for African American and Black students.