ABC30 back-to-school drive helps Fresno County students prepare

ABC30 will hold its back-to-school supply drive Friday, July 31, from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Zimmerman Boys & Girls Club, 540 N. Augusta Avenue in Fresno, asking donors to bring new backpacks and school supplies for local students.

The drive lands in a county where the pressure on family budgets is already steep. USAFacts puts Fresno County’s poverty rate at 18.3% in 2024 and estimates that about 183,000 people lived under the poverty line during the 2020-2024 period. United Ways of California’s 2025 Real Cost Measure says one in three California households fall below the measure, and the California Budget & Policy Center’s Fresno County fact sheet tracks monthly costs for housing and utilities, child care, transportation and food, all of which squeeze the same families trying to buy notebooks, crayons, binders and pencils.

For Fresno Unified families, the timing comes just ahead of the district’s 2025-2026 teacher institute days on Aug. 14 and 15, with district buyback day on Aug. 13. That makes late-July donation drives especially useful, because many households are trying to gather supplies before classrooms fully open and before teachers begin their final prep days.

ABC30 has used the back-to-school season before to organize similar donation efforts, including a call for viewers to drop off supplies at Addams Elementary School in Fresno. The station’s 2024 back-to-school events coverage also showed the newsroom has repeatedly used the season to steer attention toward practical help for students and parents.

That kind of help matters in ways that are easy to see on the first day of school. A child who arrives with a backpack, paper and pencils can start class ready to write, organize homework and join in without standing out for being unprepared. The West Fresno Family Resource Center says its annual back-to-school health fair pairs school supplies with health screenings and nutrition education for K-12 students and families, a reminder that readiness stretches beyond one purchase and into the routines that help students show up confident and included.