Cortney Burke and Angie Cozby were classmates at Sierra High School during its heyday two decades ago. Their Class of ’01 was said to be one of the school’s biggest-ever senior classes at around 250 students.

But these days, the high school senior class numbers slightly more than 100 students. Declining enrollments is only one of a series of challenges that Sierra Unified, a small mountain-based district east of Fresno, has dealt with in recent years.

The enrollment drop was due in part to a territory transfer nearly 20 years ago with Chawanakee Unified School District and Minarets Joint Union High School District in Madera County. The district, like others, also had to contend with the COVID pandemic and the Creek Fire. But it also dealt with a frequent turnover of district superintendents; complaints about poor supervision and bullying incidents, some leading to lawsuits; and a decline in students’ academic proficiency across the district.

Now two big challenges are looming: a petition to transfer a portion of Sierra Unified to Clovis Unified, and a $24.2 million bond measure on the November ballot.

Students

Superintendent turnover and the decline in academic outcomes were among the points that Cozby, now a Sierra Unified parent, put across strongly at a special board meeting last year. Then-Superintendent Jordan Reeves had announced his resignation after only two years on the job.

Cozby initially took aim at what she said were Reeves’ failures to communicate and lead effectively, but then she zeroed in on School Board trustees, including Cortney Burke.

“We have had a revolving door of admin and superintendents with little to no improvement in our district. Have you asked yourself why?” she said. “I have watched the board request information multiple times and over multiple superintendents, and it goes ignored and unanswered. There’s no accountability.”

Cozby urged the board to use the opportunity of hiring a new superintendent to raise standards, improve communication, insist on accountability, and be more transparent.

In the 2022-23 school year, student proficiency on state standardized testing dropped to its lowest level in a decade, with only 38% of Sierra’s students meeting or exceeding standards in English and only 29% meeting or exceeding standards in math. The state has not yet released the results of the spring assessment testing for the 2023-24 school year.

Cozby says her kids, now in the third and fourth grades, are testing below grade level in English and math like the majority of their classmates. But Cozby said that when she’s tried to get teachers or administrators to acknowledge it and develop a plan, she’s been brushed off.

She knows of one family that moved to Clovis. When they enrolled their kids in Clovis Unified, they were two full grade levels behind.

“Clovis thought they were special ed,” she said.

Cozby said she’s also been concerned about the high absentee rate among teachers, which also affects continuity of teaching and students’ ability to learn. She said she’s cautiously optimistic that the new superintendent, Dr. Lori Grace, will be able to give teachers the support they need and there will be a newfound focus on helping students who are behind to catch up.

“Whether the board will back her and allow her to make the changes that are needed is yet to be seen,” she said.

The New Superintendent

Grace, who took the helm in July, says improving students’ academic outcomes is high on her to-do list. She comes to Sierra after a lengthy career that included stints as principal of Hoover and McLane high schools in Fresno and as associate superintendent of educational services with the Twin Rivers Unified School District north of Sacramento.

Before taking the Sierra Unified job, Grace was a learning director at Clovis Unified School District.

She says she’s a firm believer in using data to make informed decisions about students and their education. But just as important, “I’m really focusing on bringing stability and consistent vision to the district by having some consistent leadership in place. We obviously face some challenges related to academic performance coming out of the pandemic. ”

She might have been a Sierra High student herself if her family had remained in Madera County instead of moving into northwest Fresno when she was in elementary school. Back when Grace was a youngster growing up in Madera Ranchos, Sierra Unified drew in students from nearly as far north as Oakhurst.

In the district’s earliest days, schools were spread out among mountain communities where the main industries were logging and lumber production or maintaining hydro-electric projects for Southern California Edison at Big Creek and nearby Sierra reservoirs.

The eastern portions of Fresno and Madera counties were sparsely populated, and Sierra High’s students came from both Fresno and Madera counties.

The high school campus, which today has a 200-acre working farm and barn, also includes an old dorm where mountain students could stay during the school week before heading up the hill for weekends back home, Grace says.

Sierra Unified now covers 2,100 square miles — larger than the state of Delaware — and stretches from the Clovis Unified border on the west to the Fresno County line in the High Sierra.

Because there are no community centers where folks can gather, Sierra High and Foothills Elementary serve as magnets for the entire community to attend events and also use facilities such as the swimming pool.

Grace said that if she’s had any surprises as superintendent, it’s “just how invested and welcoming the entire community is, and how positive and hardworking all of our community is and dedicated. Many times I think, especially after COVID, you’ve seen almost a regression of parents and community supporting the educational system. But not in Sierra.

“I think that the number of parents at back-to-school night, both at the high school, the junior high and the elementary, the number of folks coming out to town halls and to meet and greets, the number of folks in the stands at athletic events who may or may not have children going to the school, is just staggering.”

The district has faced numerous challenges over its 100-year history, but many will agree that the past seven years have been particularly tough.

The Enrollment Drop

Around the turn of the century Sierra Unified’s enrollments peaked at about 2,400 students, with high school graduating classes of about 250.

In 2002 the district, the Fresno County Schools Superintendent, the Fresno County Committee on School Organization, and others filed suit against the Minarets Joint Union High School District, Chawanakee Joint Unified School District, and Madera County Committee on School Reorganization.

The Madera C0unty districts wanted to combine and reclaim the students who had been crossing the county line for decades to attend Sierra High, and the result was a big drop in Sierra Unified enrollments starting around 2007. Today the district’s enrollment is about half as big as it was during its heyday.

The families who are now sending their children to Sierra Unified’s Foothills Elementary and Sierra Junior and Senior High include Sierra High alums like Burke and Cozby, who left home after their graduation but then returned to raise their families.

Burke, now president of the Sierra Unified School Board, said she left home for about 10 years, “but then after having kids I thought, I want my hometown. So it is a very family-oriented, legacy type of school district.” She’s now the mother of two sons in the fourth and ninth grades and works in her family’s business, the Auberry Feed Station.

But Burke acknowledges that the district isn’t the same one she grew up in. Her parents are still living in the home she grew up in, but there are no children living there now: “This community is aging.”

District enrollments have pretty much flattened out around 1,270.

The Superintendents’ Turnover

Up until recently the district’s leadership had remained fairly stable, but over the past decade the district was led by six superintendents or interim superintendents. Melissa Ireland was superintendent for four years until her retirement in 2019. Her replacement was Alan Harris, who remained on the job through the early years of the pandemic. Harris left in 2021 to move closer to family out of state.

His departure came at a less-than-opportune time, in the middle of the school year, Burke said.

The district appointed Ron Harris as interim superintendent while searching for a permanent replacement.

Jordan Reeves was hired as superintendent in the fall of 2021 and also served as the high school’s principal as school leadership shifted.

Cozby told Reeves and the School Board at the March 2023 meeting that she had been hopeful when he was named that the district would improve academic achievement and communications.

“I would like to say that we were very hopeful when you arrived. You sounded promising. And you told us that you were here to make things better. You conveyed you understood the unique needs of our community. And we trusted your word,” she said at the meeting. “It wasn’t long after it became obvious you were not there for the long haul and you had your own interests in sight. This has become a steppingstone for you, and I think it’s actually best that you are leaving the district. Your lack of communication, your lack of engagement in our community, and worst of all, your dishonesty across the board, from board members to staff to parents has been one we haven’t seen in quite some time or possibly ever.”

After Reeves’ departed, the board appointed Anthony Abrams as interim superintendent while it conducted a national search and then hired Grace.

The Bullying Lawsuits

School security has been an issue for some parents who say there is a culture of bullying, especially at Sierra Junior High, that goes unchecked. Some of the more serious incidents have been reported to the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.

Parent Jamie Hatcher, whose daughter was injured in a classroom incident last year, started a petition on change.org calling for the district to install and monitor more security cameras.

Hatcher said that after the incident, during which a boy struck her daughter with a PVC pipe while the teacher sat nearby at his desk without intervening, she began home-schooling her daughter.

“I won’t send her back with the same vice principal after all the lies she told me,” Hatcher said.

Meanwhile, at least two lawsuits have been filed against the district by Sierra Unified parents, claiming their children were injured in bullying incidents at the junior high school. One student got a concussion after another student threw a full soda can at the back of his head, and his brother was later seriously injured after students ganged up on him, according to the suit. The lawsuit says the two brothers were later enrolled in a private online school.

The lawsuit contends that school and district officials who failed to appropriately supervise the students “had a pattern and practice of ignoring, disregarding, and otherwise turning a blind eye to reported aggressive, violent, and bullying behavior directed towards Plaintiff.”

Another recent lawsuit claims that a school employee, the mother of a student’s former girlfriend, targeted the student after the break-up and encouraged her daughter’s current boyfriend to beat him up. The student had undergone two reconstructive surgeries and was still in recovery from the second surgery when he was attacked, and his attacker appeared to specifically aim for the injured knee with his steel-toed boot, the lawsuit claims.

Burke is somewhat dismissive when asked about complaints that school officials have ignored bullying. She said that in her tenure on the School Board she’s come to realize that sometimes incidents are magnified, especially in a rural area like the district, and that there are “always two sides to every story.” Burke said she believes that school staff respond appropriately when issues do arise.

“So I think it’s a little bit out of context or a little overblown, maybe that we have any type of problem with bullying up here,” she said.

She did acknowledge, however, that additional security cameras have been installed on school property in the past six months.

Grace says the high school is now staffed with new administrators, and having sufficient staffing means the school can do a better job at supervision.

“Obviously, we take safety very seriously,” she said.

The Territory Transfer

There had been minor territory transfers between the Sierra and Clovis districts in the 1980s through the 2000s, but those were mutually agreed upon by the two districts and not the result of a citizen initiative, according to the Fresno County Office of Education.

There are two ways to start the process – by board action or by citizen petition.

Territory transfers have slowed down considerably, with none in Fresno County in the past 15 years. The last was when Huron attempted to separate from Coalinga-Huron Unified School District, but that effort was rejected by the state Board of Education, which has the final say over school district territory transfers.

The current citizen-led initiative in Sierra Unified is the fourth attempt there since 2020. The first was filed in June 2020 and spearheaded by Jeff Johnston, a Ventana Hills resident, but was found to be legally insufficient. The next two were submitted in February and July 2023 and were initiated by Ventana Hills resident Marc Thurston and also were found to be legally insufficient by the county Office of Education.

Thurston told GV Wire that Ventana Hills parents, many of whom work in Clovis or Fresno, are inconvenienced by having to drive their children up the hill to Sierra Unified schools and then head back downhill for work.

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The current petition’s two stated reasons: “Substantial community identity and student safety and access to cocurricular activities.”

Thurston’s third petition, filed in May, was found by the Fresno County Office of Education to be legally sufficient and will be the topic of town hall meetings in Sierra Unified on Thursday and in Clovis Unified on Tuesday, Sept. 17.

Thursday’s hearing of the Fresno County Committee on School District Organization will be at 5:30 p.m. in Foothill Elementary’s multipurpose room, 29147 Auberry Road, Prather. The committee’s Sept. 17 meeting will also start at 5:30 p.m. and will be at the Clovis Unified Professional Development Building boardroom, 1680 David E. Cook Way, in Clovis.

The Sierra Unified School Board passed a resolution last month opposing the petition and asking the Fresno County Committee to reject it. If it goes through, the district would lose student enrollments as well as property tax revenues.

Clovis Unified is taking a neutral position on the petition, spokeswoman Kelly Avants said.

After the public hearings, the petition is voted on by the county committee. If approved, the petition goes before the state Board of Education, a process that can take years.

(Disclosure: GV Wire Publisher Darius Assemi is president and CEO of Granville Homes, builder of Ventana Hills.

The Bond Measure

The district’s other main and more immediate challenge is a $24.2 million bond measure to repair the aging high school. Compared to other school district bond measures on the ballot — Fresno Unified’s Measure H is $500 million, Clovis Unified’s Measure A is $400 million — Sierra Unified’s Measure U is comparatively tiny. But district voters have been rejected prior bond measures. School bond measures that are put on the ballot by School Boards must be approved by a margin of at least 55%.

And, Sierra can’t use bond money for anything but improvements at the high school, although there are facilities needs at Foothill Elementary.

The district’s boundaries include two elementary school districts, Pine Ridge and Big Creek, that have their own School Boards and taxing districts but share in Sierra Unified’s high school costs and improvements.

Burke says she’s feeling optimistic that the third time at passing a bond measure could be the charm, in part because this bond issue will go for high school improvements such as building a new barn for the 4-H program and upgrading the pool.

“I think … a big portion of them having graduated from there, it being the same bathrooms that they were in 40, 50 years ago, I think they’re understanding this time that it’s 100% for facilities. We need these major upgrades,” she said.” The buildings are not going to fall down tomorrow, won’t fall down in two to five, maybe even 10 years. But at some point you’ve got to fix the roof on your house.”

And the board is opting for a new barn that will cost a couple hundred thousand dollars over a new school library that might cost $30 million, Burke said. The overall impact of the bond measure, if voters approve it, will be an additional $45 to $90 in property taxes yearly for most homeowners, she said.

No matter what happens with the bond measure, or the territory transfer, Grace wants Sierra Unified parents and staff to know that she’s in it for the long haul.

“It’s important for me to always let our community know that I’m committed to the success of Sierra Unified, and making decisions that are in the best interest of our students,” she said. “I really have appreciated working with this community thus far and look forward to continue to work with them to achieve the shared goals. And I always want to collaborate with our families and our school community to do the very best for our students. So I look forward to the bright future we have ahead together.”