Faced with a continuing student enrollment decline and shrinking revenues, the Ceres Unified School District is continuing to tighten its belt. That was one of the takeaways offered by district Supt. Amy Peterman at Thursday evening’s joint meeting of the CUSD Board of Trustees and the Ceres City Council.
A glimmer of hope to reverse the trend of shriveling student numbers, city officials shared in return, is the expectation that Ceres will soon be entering a home building phase – something not seen in years.
City Manager Doug Dunford said the city is planning to install a one-mile-long sewer line along Service and Crows Landing roads that will allow developers to start building homes in the West Landing area in southwest Ceres.
Copper Trails Master Plan should also be considered by LAFCO in October to annex 534 acres to the city and bring a housing mix of 293 acres, or 1,310 multi-family units and 2,325 single-family houses and 34 acres of regional commercial acres. Construction could begin in late 2026.
Other highlights from Dunford:
• G3 is looking to build two 250,000-square-foot warehouses at Crows Landing and Service roads.
• StanRTA is moving its bus operations and headquarters to the same intersection
• The Service Road freeway interchange project has been revamped to reduce costs and is being redesigned. He said the project could be pictured as “Pelendale on steroids.” He gave a time estimate of construction starting as early as mid 2026;
•ACE train station could open in downtown Ceres in December 2026 with three trains initally and nine trains daily by 2029
• Ceres is looking at a sewer plant project that will break away from dependency on neighbors Modesto and Turlock to dispose of wastewater.
• The appeal of the approved Maverick station will be going before the council soon. The city favors the project since it would help pull more tax dollars from freeway travelers.
• The former Walmart building is expected to be filled by two major stores, Vallarta Supermarket and Ross Dress for Less while a possible use could be an indoor sports complex in the back.
• Public Storage has resurrected plans to fill the abandoned Kmart and should submit plans within the next two months.
Councilwoman Cerina Otero asked Peterman if CUSD foresees any large impact from the influx of more students, to which Peterman said: “We certainly hope so.”
“We’ve got the space available so send us the kids.”
Both declining enrollment and truancy is affecting the revenue stream for Ceres Unified School District, Peterman noted.
Enrollment has been steadily declining since the 2019-20 school year and is projected to lose another 150 students or so going in the 2025-26 school year.
“Enrollment is important,” Peterman said. “As a school district, we are actually funded based on our attendance, not our enrollment. So, our attendance, our average daily attendance, is how our district receives revenue.”
CUSD currently has a little over 14,000 students.
Peterman said the district continues to work on boosting the attendance, something that took a serious nosedive during the pandemic. Before COVID came along in March 2020, CUSD saw an attendance rate of 95.5% attendance which dropped to 89% when California schools reopened. Now 94 percent of students are showing up in class. Since the state bases school funding on average daily attendance, “the decline in enrollment and the decline in attendance rates really do have a huge impact on our budget,” said Peterman.
“We’ve hired staff that worked really hard to communicate with families. We’ve got schools doing unique fun incentives and drawings and prizes and events and communicating on our social media, just really anything and everything that we can figure out to make sure we get kids to school as often as possible.”
CUSD has also brought back the School Attendance Review Board to hold families accountable for getting their students to school.
Peterman shared that the CUSD general fund is $308 million, of which approximately 85% is spent on salaries.
“When it comes to looking at this year’s revenue compared to last year’s, this year’s revenue decreased by about a million dollars as a result of our drop in enrollment and EDA. So that means that we need to look at our expenditures and reduce those expenditures to align with the revenue that we’re receiving.”
To trim staff, some positions are being cut after employees retire or move elsewhere.
Another factor that could impact revenues is the possible elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, which provides less than 10 percent of CUSD’s revenue stream.
“We still really don’t know how that’s going to affect us in Ceres Unified if at all. So, we’re just waiting to see if there will be an impact us.”
CUSD is the largest employer in Ceres with 2,579 employees, of which 1,108 are certificated staff like teachers, counselors and administrators; 908 are classified employees; and 563 are substitutes.
“The conversation that we’re having with our educational partners that we meet with frequently, which is staff, parents, even students, is just really trying to get people to understand that we need to make sure that we’re living within our means. And so when our revenue goes down, we have to make those what we’re calling trims.”
Peterman detailed how the COVID pandemic caused an increase in chronic absenteeism, defined as a student who misses 10% or more of the school year or about 18 days of school. Pre-pandemic, chronic absenteeism was at 8.5 percent. After COVID almost a third of CUSD students were in that category.
“We’ve worked really hard to reduce that and our last data from the last school year was at 16% and we’re expecting that to drop some more by the end of this year.”
Peterman reported that the high school graduation rate has improved to 92.3 percent, up from 86 percent in 2019-20 and 85.8 percent in 2021-22.
“We have a lot of our students that do finish with that high school diploma.”
CUSD building projects
Peterman highlighted a number of building projects, mentioning plans to eventually build a sports stadium at Central Valley High School. She called it “the last missing piece for a school that’s almost 20 years old now.”
Showing artist renderings of the design of the front of the stadium, Peterman said the district is excited to begin the first phase “very soon,” and will include a ticket booth, restroom and snack bar building, home bleachers and a press box, the artificial track and turf similar to the Ceres High school project and parking and some fencing and visitors bleachers.
“So we’re planning to break round in June and that project will take a couple of years to complete.”
Sam Vaughn Elementary School is seeing construction of a new classroom wing for an expanding transitional kindergarten classes. The project is funded by Measure Y funds and state matching dollars.
Plans are in motion to build an Internet tower in the rural area of Westport Elementary School campus so students can use the internet while at home.
CUSD is also installing a junior high career readiness force at the three traditional junior high schools. An electrical capstone course and a construction pathway course are being added at Ceres High School and a medical pathway course at Central Valley High School.
“This is really all part of our college career readiness planning for our students to make sure that students have options when they leave our schools,” said Peterman.
Funds from Measure Y, passed by the voters last fall, will be funding several projects. Portable classrooms will be replaced at Carroll Fowler, Sam Vaughn, Virginia Parks, Argus/Endeavor and Ceres High School. The 600 classroom wing at Mae Hensley Junior High will receive a new roof and the main hall at Ceres High will be modernized.
Bond proceeds in the second phase will pay for additional portable classroom replacements, some campus modernizations, work on the Ceres High bleachers and press box and possibly some office and library buildings at campuses presently without them.
CUSD has added more security cameras on its 20 campuses which now total over 900. Surveillance cameras have been installed in the multi-purpose rooms or cafeterias in 13 schools.
Vape sensors have been installed in the bathrooms in the high schools to help with “an ongoing challenge.”
City and CUSD officials were in praise of the school resource program funded by the school district which puts an officer on the secondary school campuses. The benefit is improved campus security and students get to connect with an officer.
Sgt. Dirk Nieuwenheis oversees the SRO unit while current assignments are Kiashira Ortiz is assigned to Central Valley High School; Lorenzo Beltran at Ceres High; Steve Carvalho is split between Argus High School and Cesar Chavez Jr. High; and Salin Chrim is assigned to Blaker Kinser and Mae Hensley junior high schools.
“A lot of the students that we have build positive relationships with the SRO, they confide in them, they trust in them, and it allows them to see our officers in a different light,” said Lt. Jeff Godfrey who was filling in for Nieuwenheis at the meeting. He said students building relationships with officers is “very impactful.”
The 2+2+2 Meeting will take place on Oct. 29 at 4 p.m. and the next joint meeting is set for March 26, 2026.
