News Update

Fresno Unified to get laundry machines in all middle schools

Fresno Unified’s middle schools will all get new washers and dryers by next month, The Fresno Bee reported.

The district’s leadership announced the new initiative this month, but it may not have happened if not for the efforts of Eric Calderon, a middle school teacher in the district. According to the Bee, Calderon brought attention to the issue when he began fundraising for new laundry machines.

Calderon told the Bee that when he and other staff began calling families of chronically absent students to find out what they could do to help, they learned that one of the top reasons those students weren’t attending was because they didn’t have clean clothes.

“What I would call a basic human need was affecting attendance for our student population,” Calderon said.

Calderon later engaged with district leadership about the issue, and they agreed to the cover the costs of new laundry machines not only at Calderon’s school, but at all middle schools across the district, according to the Bee.