Fresno school superintendent earns eye-popping six-figure salaries as district cuts jobs, field trips

Fresno parents are watching their children’s education crumble, while the woman running the school system collects an eye-popping paycheck.

Fresno Unified Superintendent Mao Misty Her earns a reported base pay of $386,045, receives $87,117 in benefits and “other pay” of $40,563, which comes to a staggering total of $513,725, per Transparent California.

The numbers have sparked outrage because they come as Fresno Unified grapples with a massive budget crisis that has led to job cuts, staffing changes and the elimination of many popular student field trips.

Fresno Unified has about 70,163 students, according to the California Department of Education.

For comparison, Elk Grove Unified has approximately 65,483 students, with Superintendent David Reilly beginning this year with a $352,365 base salary plus benefits, according to the Sacramento Bee.

The difference has fueled criticism online, with a recent post about the Fresno superintendent’s salary going viral.

“No public official should make more than the POTUS. School funding has gone to administrators not teachers. That’s one of the problems with our education system,” one user wrote.

“They are literally robbing your kids of their future,” another said.

“The children deserve better. Parents get engaged at school board meetings and challenge the contract,” a third commenter wrote.

The backlash comes as Fresno Unified school district faces an $88 million projected deficit for next year, a 49% jump from the projection made in February.

District trustees recently moved forward with layoffs and employee “bumping,” with nearly 200 classified employees expected to receive final notices involving layoffs, displacement or reduced positions.

The district has argued that it can no longer afford to maintain current staffing levels.

Under the “bumping” process, some employees facing layoffs can move into comparable vacant positions or displace workers with less seniority. Those displaced employees can then enter the same process, potentially creating a domino effect throughout the district.

Officials say they hope to keep fully benefited employees within the district, although some could have to accept lower-paying or substantially different jobs.

Students are also feeling the financial squeeze.

In August, Fresno Unified confirmed it was eliminating TK through sixth-grade field trips and sixth-grade camps as part of its budget cuts.

The district is eliminating about $2.2 million in centrally funded enrichment trips, affecting roughly 40,000 students, according to YourCentralValley.

Among the trips potentially on the chopping block are visits to a pumpkin patch, the Big Fresno Fair and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Sixth-grade camp is also being eliminated, a decision that has left some parents and teachers furious.

“The sixth-grade camp is one of the best memories these kids have,” one parent wrote.

For Fresno families, the contrast is raising a pointed question: How can the district afford hundreds of thousands of dollars in superintendent compensation while saying it can’t afford field trips and hundreds of employees?

“Fresno Unified recognizes the benefit of field trips and enrichment opportunities for our students; however, like many other districts, we’ve had to make tough financial decisions to prioritize jobs and core student instruction,” the school district said in a statement to the California Post.

“We want to be clear in response to the suggestion that the district is eliminating field trips, we are not. What has changed is the level of centralized district funding available to subsidize certain field trips and enrichment activities.

“Recent claims that Fresno Unified is “taking away all field trips” are inaccurate. As stated, we are reducing a centralized subsidy because the funding that supported it is no longer available; we are not prohibiting or eliminating field trips.”

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