School districts in California

California splits the two grade bands between separate districts over a large part of the state: 27% of its homes sit under an elementary district that stops before high school, with a separate secondary district taking over from there. That is why 701 of its 1,788 ZIP Code areas return a different set of districts for grade school than for high school. In 93706 (Fresno), the most divided of them, Fresno Unified leads both answers, and the disagreement sits under it rather than at the top of the list. The two districts that share the most ZIP Codes here are Campbell Union Elementary and Campbell Union High, in 12 of them.

How many school districts are in California?

974: the Census boundary file draws 974 school districts in California that reach at least one ZIP Code area with homes, 345 unified, 517 elementary and 112 secondary. A ZIP Code here can sit in more than one of them, which is why a school district lookup by ZIP Code for California lists them all: find your school district by ZIP code.

Two districts at one address

California keeps 112 separate secondary districts — districts that pick students up partway through and run to the end of high school, over several elementary districts at once. Where one of those sits, an address has two district names and neither is wrong.

ZIP Code areas with a district1,788
Served by more than one district996 (56%)
Grade school and high school differ701 (39%)
No high school district named3
Unified districts345
Elementary districts517
Secondary districts112
Homes in no district at all0

District pages for California, largest first

Los Angeles Unified is the largest of them by far: at 1,736,700 homes it holds at least 3 times as many as San Diego City Unified, second on this list with 440,728. It reaches 170 ZIP Code areas, and the areas it covers alone are counted on its own page rather than assumed from its size.

The most divided ZIP Code area in California

ZIP Code area 93706 is the most divided in California: 11 districts reach into its 11,893 homes, led for the early grades by Fresno Unified and Washington Unified School District. No single name describes this postal code, and no lookup that gives one is telling the whole truth about it.

Grade schoolFresno Unified School District54%6,383 of 11,893 homes

High schoolFresno Unified School District54%6,383 of 11,893 homes

Each percentage here is a share of the 11,893 homes counted in ZIP Code 93706, not the chance that any one address is in that district. Enrollment follows the street: two houses on opposite sides of the same road can be in different districts, and only the district office can say which.

Every track below is 35 cells long and stands for all 11,893 homes counted in ZIP Code 93706, so one cell is 340 homes, rounded to the nearest whole cell. Cells lit solid are the homes one district holds, and the unlit cells are the homes held by the other districts in the same list.

Fresno Unified School District6,383 of 11,893 homes54%
Washington Unified School District2,371 of 11,893 homes20%
Central Unified School District912 of 11,893 homes7.7%
Washington Colony Elementary School District700 of 11,893 homes5.9%
West Park Elementary School District461 of 11,893 homes3.9%
Raisin City Elementary School District328 of 11,893 homes2.8%
Orange Center Elementary School District316 of 11,893 homes2.7%
Kerman Unified School District250 of 11,893 homes2.1%
Pacific Union Elementary School District123 of 11,893 homes1.0%

3 further districts reach into this area and hold 49 homes between them, under half a percent of the homes named at this level each.

For grade school, an answer of one district name would be wrong for 5,510 of the 11,893 here.

How much of California a single district name misses

Across the 1,788 ZIP Code areas in California with homes in them, an answer of one district name misses 1,472,573 of the 14,391,427 homes they hold — 10% of the state. In 795 of those areas the largest district for the early grades holds every home counted; in the other 993 it leaves some out. That is a different count from the 996 areas served by more than one district: it also counts districts under half a percent of the homes and homes in no district, and it does not count a high school district that differs.

ZIP Code 93307 · Bakersfield, California names 7 districts. Greenfield Union is the largest of them for grade school, and an answer of its name alone misses 14,542 of the 24,590 homes there; for grade school the rest is 14,412 homes with Bakersfield City, Fairfax Elementary, Lamont Elementary and 2 more districts; 130 homes in districts too small to name here.

ZIP Code 92804 · Anaheim, California names 6 districts. Magnolia Elementary is the largest of them for grade school, and an answer of its name alone misses 14,091 of the 26,017 homes there; for grade school the rest is 14,091 homes with Anaheim Elementary, Savanna Elementary, Centralia Elementary and one more district.

ZIP Code 95747 · Roseville, California names 4 districts. Roseville City Elementary is the largest of them for grade school, and an answer of its name alone misses 13,084 of the 27,698 homes there; for grade school the rest is 12,978 homes with Dry Creek Joint Elementary and Center Joint Unified; 106 homes in a district too small to name here.

Where a ZIP Code here names more than one district

Of the 1,788 ZIP Code areas in California that the federal file names a district for, 996 name more than one school district. These are the 12 with the most, starting at 11 districts in one postal area: Fresno, Diamond Springs and Marina. Each row opens the full answer for that ZIP Code, with every district named for grade school and for high school and the share of the homes each one holds.

What to do next

Ask the district office to confirm your street address: look on its site for a school locator, a find my school tool or an attendance zone map, or call the office.

A ZIP Code is a set of mail delivery routes, not a boundary: 996 of the 1,788 ZIP Code areas in California with a district named for them are served by more than one school district, and the line between two of them runs along streets. Only the district can say which side of that line an address is on.

District websites and phone numbers here come from the NCES Common Core of Data directory, 2024-25 school year, filed under the same district ID as the Census boundary files. Where it lists no usable website, none is printed rather than guessed.

If a house purchase depends on the answer, ask the district itself for written confirmation of that exact address. A listing is not a district record, and neither is this page.

Where these numbers come from

The homes were counted in the 2020 Census and the district lines are the 2026 boundary file, so a fast-growing area may have changed since; ZIP Codes here are the Census Bureau's ZIP Code Tabulation Areas; a share is a share of homes, not the chance that one address is in a district; and a district is not a school attendance zone. Every source, file and caveat is on the method page.