Elections offices in the Valley are inching closer to completing the vote counts from the Nov. 5 election, with new releases Monday showing that the Clovis Unified School District and State Center Community College District bond measures are maintaining their slim margins of victory.

Meanwhile, the frontrunner in a Clovis Unified trustee race has continued to widen her lead, while a Fresno Unified trustee candidate’s lead is shrinking.

Vote totals are preliminary and are not final until they are certified by county Elections Offices. The deadline for certification is Dec. 5.

The Fresno County Elections Office said Monday that about 7,100 votes remain to be counted, and an additional 5,400 votes are pending the return of signature cure letters that are due by Dec. 1. The county’s next update will be Friday afternoon.

Measures Q, A Building Leads

State Center’s $698 million Measure Q, which finally topped the 55% approval margin on Friday, has about 1,000 more yes than no votes out of more than 341,000 cast.

School and community college bond measures must be approved by 55% of voters to pass.

There were numerous school and community college bond measures on November’s ballot in anticipation that California voters would pass Proposition 2, which will provide $10 billion in state funding for school and community college facilities.

As of Monday, State Center was at 55.28% approval. The bulk of the district’s voter base is in Fresno County, where Measure Q was winning with 55.88%.

Madera and Kings counties, where Measure Q has been failing to reach 55%, are scheduled to release new updates later this week. An update on Q from Tulare County, where voters have been favoring the bond, was expected Monday evening. Madera County’s will come on Wednesday afternoon and Kings County’s on Friday afternoon. Madera County has the second-largest voting base in the district, and Kings County’s is the smallest, with only a few hundred votes.

In Clovis Unified, Measure A widened its approval margin and is now at 57.36%, prompting Superintendent Corrine Folmer to express “confidence” of victory in a news release Monday afternoon.

“These results show that voters support us in our commitment to keeping our school facilities first class for our students and staff. The passing of Measure A also indicates how important our students’ education is to our community and reflects the longstanding partnership between our District and the families we serve,” she said.

“We have emphasized that this bond measure is critical to keeping our schools in the great shape they are in today and to finishing the much-needed Clovis South High School. As work on the Measure A project list gets underway, our commitment remains accountability, transparency, and pursuit of the highest standards in all that we do for our students, our team, and our community.”

Folmer said she was grateful to the community volunteers who worked hard to advocate for the bond measure as well as those who voted in favor of it.

“This was a pivotal moment for our schools and the passage of Measure A secures a stable path into the future for our district,” she said.

The $400 million bond measure was one of three local bond measures that were failing to get 55% approval on election night but gained more yes than no votes in subsequent updates. The other two are Sanger Unified’s $175 million Measure M, which dipped slightly to 57.29% approval in Monday’s update, and State Center’s Measure Q.

School Trustee Races Are Tight

In Clovis Unified’s Area 2 trustee race, Wilma Tom Hashimoto, executive director of CASA of Fresno Madera Counties, continued to build her slim lead over Molly DeFrank, an author and mother. They and the third candidate, retired teacher Janet Kardashian, are vying to replace DeFrank’s husband, David, who opted not to seek reelection.

Hashimoto and DeFrank are 330 votes apart, according to the latest update: Hashimoto has 41.75%, DeFrank has 39.55%, and Kardashian has 18.62%.

A much tighter race is Fresno Unified’s Hoover region, where challenger Dan Bordona, a retired teacher, is losing ground and now has a 153-vote lead over incumbent Claudia Cazares, an analyst with the city of Clovis. Bordona has 50.49% and Cazares has 49.36% out of the 13,595 votes counted thus far.