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Next week, 1,100 Clovis students in seventh through ninth grade will begin their school year at the brand-new Terry P. Bradley Educational Center, the most expensive school campus built in the Central Valley with a price tag of more than $600 million.
Located at the corner of East Clinton Avenue and North Highland Avenue, the 170-acre educational center is home to Clovis South High School and Phillip V. Sanchez Intermediate School, as well as a future elementary school.
The campus is just three miles south of Clovis East High, which opened in 1999, and reflects the ongoing eastward expansion driving the Fresno-Clovis metropolitan area’s population growth.
Clovis Unified has benefitted from that housing development boom. The school system’s student population has grown by more than 2,000 pupils over the past decade, making it California’s 12th largest school district. The district expects to have nearly 44,000 students enrolled for the new academic year.
The Terry P. Bradley campus will open fully in phases over three years. The facilities currently ready for use include two academic buildings, a library that also houses administrative offices, a multi-purpose building, the south wing of the gym, a snack bar, and an outdoor amphitheater.
Sonia Torossian, principal of the educational center, said the campus will include a top-loading gym which has an entrance on the concourse level, a football stadium with a capacity of 3,500, and is the first school in Clovis Unified to have an artificial turf track.
“This is phase one of the project, we have the intermediate school towers ready to go, our office, our library,” said Torossian. “Over the course of the next three years, we’ll build out Clovis South High School, and then the larger competition gym, a football stadium, and so forth.”
The library building shared by Sanchez Intermediate and Clovis South High sits at the center of campus. One of the high-ceilinged building’s walls is painted with Clovis South’sburnt-orange-and-blue mascot, Lucky the Longhorn. Textbooks are neatly arranged on movable shelves with sliding rails for efficient access and increased storage space. The building also serves as an administrative center.
“This is a large building. It has all sorts of shared services. There’s going to be a snack spot for kids to hang out. There’s going to be the nurse’s office, the counseling office, all those things in one location,” said Stephanie Hanks, assistant superintendent for the Clovis South area.
There are six service windows at the snack bar across the academic buildings, and the multi-purpose building next to it will serve as a cafeteria for students.
Kelly Avants, the district’s chief communications officer, said the multi-purpose building can accommodate up to 700 people and is equipped with roll-up doors, which create an indoor-outdoor integration and allow the cafeteria tables to be spread out.
When fully built, the 170-acre educational center will become the largest campus in Clovis Unified, exceeding Buchanan High School’s 165-acre campus, which also includes Alta Sierra Intermediate and Garfield Elementary. The Terry P. Bradley Educational Center will be able to accommodate 4,650 students from kindergarten to 12th grade, Avants said.
Torossian said the school prepared a series of exciting events to greet students and families during the first week of the semester.
“We’re going to have an adjusted bell schedule on the first day, welcoming students after first period. We’ll do the whole campus tour,” Torossian said. “We’re ending the week with a ‘No Backpack Day’ and a running rally where we’re going to celebrate our athletics programs, our prep and cheer program, and just get the campus excited to be here.”
The namesake of the educational center, Clovis Unified’s beloved former Superintendent Terry P. Bradley, passed away a month before the campus’s grand opening.