With roots going back to schools that opened in the late 1800s, the Lake Elsinore Unified School District is one of oldest public school systems in Southern California. Covering 140 square miles in Southwest Riverside County, the district serves the cities of Lake Elsinore, Canyon Lake and Wildomar and several unincorporated communities, including Lakeland Village and Horsethief Canyon.

The district has a population of nearly 22,000 students, which it serves at fourteen elementary schools, five middle schools, three comprehensive high schools and four alternative schools. With more than 3,000 permanent and substitute employees, Lake Elsinore Unified is one of the biggest employers in the region.

For the 2009-10 school year, the district's adopted operating budget is $164.5 million.

As of September 2008, Lake Elsinore Unified was no longer considered a "Program Improvement" district under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The district had been in Program Improvement status for three years because it had failed to meet federal Adequate Yearly Progress benchmarks for English Learners and Special Education students on standardized tests. In order to lose the designation, a school district must meet or exceed the benchmarks two years in a row. The 2007-08 school year marked the second straight year Lake Elsinore Unified met the benchmarks and the district was the only district in the state to exit Program Improvement status. In all, there are nearly 500 school districts currently in Program Improvement status across the state.

Two Lake Elsinore Unified schools that had also been tagged with the designation also were successful in exiting Program Improvement status. Elsinore Elementary School, which has been in Program Improvement for five years, and Butterfield Elementary School, which had been in for one year, both met their federal benchmarks for the second straight year.