Central Unified trustees on Tuesday voted 6-0, with one abstention, to select the name for the district’s new elementary school.

The school, which is projected to open this fall with more than 600 students, is being named after Jaswant Singh Khalra, a Sikh human rights activist who was assassinated in 1995. He’s also the namesake of a Fresno city park a few blocks south of the school site at the corner of Shields and Brawley avenues.

Given recent controversies over school names that embroiled the community, the board decided to bypass the sturm und drang and not seek widespread public input this time.

“During my tenure on this board, we have had an opportunity to name at least two schools,” Board president Naindeep Singh Chann said at Tuesday’s board meeting. “And oftentimes when people talk about the divisiveness, it’s actually less around the naming of the school. It’s actually sometimes been about the process. …

“In terms of our previous conversation, we’re really moving away from only a popularity contest to really centering on those marginalized voices in our community and making sure that all communities are seen and heard.”

Chann, noting that the new school is in his trustee area, said he spoke with students who will attend there as well as community members and neighbors about naming the school after Khalra.

“For me and for many of our South Asian community members and specific Punjabi neighbors, he’s absolutely a person of admiration because it’s a story of loyalty and friendship, integrity, courage and principle,” Chann said. “His daughter attended Fresno State. His family resides in our district. And probably thousands of our families here in the Fresno area were able to seek refugee asylum in this region because of his actual direct work.”

Chann is one of two Sikhs-Americans on the Central board. The other is Jaspreet Sidhu, who was elected last November to his first term. Chann and Sidhu were joined by trustees Yesenia Carrillo, Natalie Chavez, and Karla Kirk, and board clerk Nabil Kherfan in approving the school name. Trustee Joshua Sellers, who abstained, questioned why the board didn’t consider using a geographical name, as it had for another elementary school and its middle schools.

“Having been around during the time of the renaming process and having had to experience that and hear from multiple different community groups, I was always of the mindset that naming any campus after an individual is probably not the best idea,” he said at Tuesday’s board meeting. “As much as we want to honor people — and I have nothing against your suggestion — just for myself, I think trying to find something geographically here in the area that represents everybody, that would be the direction I would recommend going.”

Dissension Over Earlier Decisions

Tuesday’s 6-0 vote with Sellers’ abstention was in stark contrast to the split board votes on previous school-naming decisions.

When it came to naming the district’s new comprehensive high in 2021, more than 200 names were proposed by the public, including former President Barack Obama, then-Fresno Mayor Lee Brand, and social media celebrity Lovely Peaches. Friends of the late Justin Garza, the beloved head football coach at Central High who had lost his battle with cancer, mounted a concerted effort to convince the board to name the school for him instead of calling it Central North. And trustees did — on a 4-3 vote.

Related Story: Central Unified Names New High School After Justin Garza on Split Vote

After Polk Elementary fourth grader Malachi Suarez mounted his own campaign to have the school’s name changed because President James K. Polk was a slave owner, the board conducted surveys and held town hall meetings in a process that stretched over a year before agreeing in July 2022 on a 4-2 vote to rename the school Central Elementary.

Related Story: Strong Divisions Remain After Central Trustees Make Choice for School’s ...

The board policy for naming or renaming schools specifies that the trustees can recognize individuals, living or dead, who have made outstanding contributions to the county or community or contributions of state, national or worldwide significance, or recognize the geographical area. In addition, “other names may be submitted by consideration by the Board,” the policy says.

It does not require the board to seek districtwide or communitywide input, however.

Clovis North Seniors Blind Me with Science

Out of the 300 students worldwide who were selected for the Regeneron Science Talent Search 2025, two are from Clovis North, and one has a family history with the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors.

The two students are Shiv Mehrotra-Varma and Pauline Victoria Allasas Estrada, whose older brother John Benedict won a major award in the contest as a sophomore in 2021.

Related Story: Clovis North Student Wins $55K in World Science Prizes for Drought Remedy

Pauline’s project was “Rapid Detection of Acetolactate Synthetase Inhibitor Resistant Weeds Utilizing Novel Full-Spectrum Imaging and a Bayesian-Optimized Hyperparameter-Tuned Convolutional Neural Network (CNN): A Two-Year Trial.” Shiv’s project was “Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Are at Elevated Risk of Developing New Hypertension and Chronic Kidney Disease Following COVID-19 Infections.”

Their award-winning projects netted $2,000 apiece for them and their northeast Fresno high school.

Goals and Guardrails Disconnect?

Fresno Unified trustees have been engaged in a lengthy process to establish goals for student performance as well as guardrail protections.

At last week’s board meeting, the first goal up for consideration was to increase the reading proficiency of first graders from 48% in June 2024 to 80% by June 2030. Which raised a question in School Zone’s mind: Didn’t then-Superintendent Bob Nelson, when announcing in April 2023 that the district was embarking on a huge literacy campaign, say that the goal was to have ALL students reading at grade level by the end of the first grade? (Although to be fair, Nelson, who is now on the faculty of Fresno State’s Kremen School of Education, didn’t set a deadline for the first graders’ literacy.)

The proposed guardrails include preventing the superintendent from meeting goals by excluding certain student groups and from promoting staff who fail to meet standards.

The academic goals are pretty specific and promise some significant improvements of student performance. And it seems self-evident that teachers will be on the front lines of making sure those goals are met.

So, what do Fresno teachers think of the district goals and guardrails?

“While setting goals is great, it’s clear they’re missing the bigger picture: nothing will change unless they’re willing to shift the district’s culture. That means truly listening to educators, valuing all staff members, addressing the culture of fear/retribution, providing real support, and making decisions that reflect what’s actually happening in our classrooms and school sites,” teachers union president Manuel Bonilla said in a text to School Zone.

Students, Need Dress Clothes? New Clovis West ‘Store’ Has You Covered

Students in the Clovis West area whose clothing budgets are stretched thin can shop at a new, no-cost “boutique-style shopping experience.” Golden Eagle Outfitters is scheduled for its grand opening at 3 p.m. this afternoon.

Students, staff, community members and the Clovis Rotary Club combined forces to get the store up and running.

The Rotary Club donated $3,000 for materials and racks, which are filled with donations from high school staff and the community.

Clovis West Area SOAR Transition director Sarah Quesada developed the project along with Clovis West teacher Erin Garcia. The genesis was when school officials had to make a last-minute scramble to outfit a student who didn’t have dress clothes for his graduation ceremony last year.

Quesada said there’s been huge support from students, including members of Clovis West’s Interact Club, SOAR, Fashion Club, Life Skills, and automative programs in designing marketing materials, building store fixtures, and preparing the inventory.

Golden West Outfitters is available by request or referral for students and their families in the Clovis West Area.

Want to help? Donations of new or VERY gently used items appropriate for students in grades TK-12 can be dropped off at the Clovis West front office, the school’s SOAR office, and the feeder schools (Kastner Intermediate and Fort Washington, Liberty, Lincoln, Maple Creek, Nelson, Pinedale, and Valley Oak elementaries).