Lake Elsinore Unified has recently seen a sharp increase in enrollment due to the fast growth of residential development.
Jean Hayman Elementary was closed at the end of the 2008 school year due to budget cuts.
[14] While dealing with the rapid growth, it is also making strong gains when it comes to academic achievement.
The district’s third-place showing (county-wide) in 2008 was a marked improvement from 11th place four years before.
Eight of the top 20 schools with the greatest API growth in Riverside County are from LEUSD.
With its 70-point gain, Terra Cotta was the seventh highest-improving middle school in the state.
$1.5 million[10][19] would be spent on the four-year-old Lakeland Village Middle School campus to adapt it for use by the kindergarten through fifth graders that would be added.
At the same time, a different approach was being used at the former Luiseño Elementary School located in the Horsethief Canyon community.
On February 13, 2014 the district voted to hire architectural and construction firms[24] for 3 new (or rebuilt) campuses.
Plans were to partially reopen the closed Butterfield Elementary with a rebuilt campus by Fall 2015 (expanding to 6th grade by 2016).
Plans continue to build new elementary campuses on district-owned land in the Summerly Housing tract near the Lake Elsinore Diamond, and to build a new elementary school on district-owned land near Wasson Canyon Road.
In 2011-12 the district began increasing class sizes in grades K–3 in response to lower state funding.
In 2002-03, the district moved back to a traditional schedule with all schools starting in August and finishing in June.