Clovis Unified sets student enrollment record, now CA’s 11th largest district
Student enrollment in the Clovis Unified School District has reached a record high, making it the 11th largest school district in California, according to enrollment data released by the California Department of Education.
State records show that Clovis Unified added 382 students in the 2025–26 school year, representing a 0.9% increase from the last school year. This number places Clovis Unified fourth in California with the highest student enrollment growth at a time when enrollment has declined across many of the state’s largest school districts.
Clovis Unified now has a total non-charter student enrollment of 43,254.
This also marks the fourth consecutive year of steady enrollment growth for Clovis Unified since the pandemic. During the 2019-20 school year, enrollment in Clovis Unified once reached 43,207, but then dropped for two straight years, hitting a decade-low of 41,954. The district’s population began to recover in the 2022-23 school year, reaching a new high this current year.
Clovis Unified stands out against the state-wide and nationwide trend of declining enrollment, primarily due to falling birth rates and a decrease in immigration rates. This year, California has seen the sharpest drop in enrollment since school reopened following the pandemic. The enrollment in public schools across the state fell by 1.3%, or by 74,961 students, according to data from the state Department of Education.
“The growth of our district is a testament to the work of our incredible team of educators to create a first-class learning experience for our students and their families,” Clovis Unified spokesperson Kelly Avants said.
The rise in the district’s enrollment is largely attributed to Clovis Unified’s strong reputation for academic and athletic excellence, which has driven a housing development boom in Clovis and northern Fresno.
“Just from my experience in a couple of years of being with the building industry, the number one driver for a new home purchase is the school district, so Clovis Unified is the number one appealing factor,” said Darren Rose, president of the Building Industry Association of Fresno/Madera Counties.
In recent years, Clovis has been accelerating its expansion north of Shepherd Avenue, with developers filling vacant fields with thousands of new homes. Located at the heart of the booming housing construction, Clovis Unified plans to build a new elementary school near Perrin Road and North Minnewawa Avenue. The school will have a capacity of 750 students and is expected to open in August 2030, according to Denver Stairs, the district’s assistant superintendent of facilities.
“Growth brings its own set of challenges related to keeping pace with needed staffing, facility space, organizational culture, and classroom resources needed to support larger enrollments, but we have been a growing district since our inception 65 years ago,” Avants said. “These complex challenges are familiar to us, and we have built systems and structures to preserve and improve as we grow.”
Despite the district-wide enrollment continuing to grow, Avants said the class size ratios have remained about the same in the last few years, and the preparations for the upcoming school year are using the same ratios for staffing purposes.
Last year, a document that The Bee obtained from the district teachers showed that in the fall semester of 2024, 20 of the 35 elementary schools in Clovis Unified had classes with 27 students, which exceeded the state’s K-3 Grade Span Adjustment grant’s requirement of reducing average class sizes to 24 students or fewer in kindergarten through third grade at all elementary schools.
Avants said last year that the goal of reducing class sizes cannot be achieved overnight. She provided that in fall 2024, the school site with the average lowest class size ratio in Clovis Unified was 20:1, and the site with the highest average ratio was 26:1.
“As a public school system serving all residents living in our close to 200-square-mile boundary, our job is to focus on creating the best educational experience possible for every student and every family choosing to live in the communities we serve,” Avants told The Bee last week.
