Young people in Fresno face daunting challenges as they pursue their goals in school and life. There is growing evidence that local high school graduates struggle to attend college or pursue living-wage jobs. With this context in mind, Fresno Unified School District launched a strategic plan that reinforces its commitment to investing in meaningful career technical education (CTE) training for students. To support strong collaborative relationships between the district, program partners, and community leaders with respect to programs like CTE, Fresno Unified recently established an Education Foundation. The Foundation will support the district’s work by allowing charitable donations to fund educational enhancements, specifically through the expansion of the Fresno Unified Scholarship Fund. The Foundation is currently working to disseminate fundraising and partnership priorities, with nearly 900 business and industry partners investing in schools, pathways, and students to help create future opportunities for students and the community.

To support this work, the Fresno Unified School District (FUSD) will partner with FUSE Corps to develop a comprehensive partnerships strategy for the district. The FUSE Executive Fellow will first conduct a landscape assessment of FUSD’s partnerships, mapping all of FUSD’s programs and business and industry partners. Utilizing this information, the Executive Fellow will lay out specific recommendations to help achieve the FUSD’s overall goals, outlining how the district can strategically partner with various stakeholders to expand the breadth and depth of their scholarship fundraising for the career and educational advancement of Fresno’s students. The Executive Fellow will initiate implementation of this plan, researching, recommending, and implementing a central repository for real-time tracking and cross-team knowledge sharing of these programs and partnerships. Through a targeted partnership strategy, FUSD will be able to more effectively use its scholarship programming to advance educational and economic outcomes for all students.