KMPH Fox 26: "Is Fresno Unified a school district in crisis?
"Over the past several weeks we've reported on many challenges the district is facing, from scores that rank it in the bottom five percent in the nation in terms of academic performance by one measure,... to fights on school campuses,... to a lack of control on campuses that many teachers and employees fear is a risk for them as well as for students.
"Now, those same FUSD employees are telling us they believe all of those problems, and more, maybe emanating from the same source--- a culture of retribution coming from the administration-- that they say permeates the district's policies and practices, hanging like a dark cloud over everyone.
“We're in the dark, why? Because even being beyond their reach, probably I'm not beyond their reach. There could be more coming for me.”
"This former teacher is talking about the Fresno Unified School District and Newstalk KMJ afternoon drive host Philip Teresi says, he's heard this story before.
“That's exactly what I'm seeing. The level of fear and apprehensiveness by staff is crystal clear as soon as you talk to these people.”
“Fresno Unified School District,-third largest in the state, 106 schools, 10,000 staff, serving nearly 70,000 students with a budget of more than $2 billion, but critics call it a district in crisis.
“You've got something like a reading rate of, a grade level reading rate of 17%,” Teresi pointed out, and that drops to just 9% in students performing at grade level in math, according to the same state diagnostic test.
"Bullard High School Head football coach Don Arax says it’s much worse than that.
“I think the public would be shocked if there was a running video of the things going on on these campuses and even more shocked if they saw the way these problems were dealt with.”