Clovis Unified School District names new superintendent after months-long search

Corrine Folmer will take over as the next superintendent of the Clovis Unified School District, the school board announced Monday in a unanimous 7-0 vote.

Folmer, 44, currently serves as the district’s associate superintendent of school leadership, overseeing the district’s 52 schools and leading CUSD’s six assistant superintendents.

She will step into the superintendent’s role July 1.

“There is so much emotion,” she said Monday about the excitement of being named the high-achieving school district’s next leader. “I am humbled and honored to serve as superintendent.”

As superintendent, she said she’ll be able to “pour back” into the community, specifically the school community of educators, in a different way.

“A graduate of Clovis Unified, Dr. Folmer is an experienced educational leader whose career spans both elementary and secondary educational roles,” the district said in a statement.

Over a 20-year career in Clovis Unified, she has served as a teacher, guidance instructional specialist, learning director, elementary principal, assistant superintendent of the Clovis East Area and her current role as associate superintendent, according to the school district.

Folmer, who said she has taken pride in working with and getting to know staff, looks ahead to meeting the certificated and classified employees she hasn’t met before now.

Folmer’s experience

Every candidate, with proven leadership, could’ve led the district as the next superintendent, board members expressed.

But Folmer stood out not only because of her “breadth of experience” across all levels of Clovis Unified but because of her reputation of valuing employees, Board President David DeFrank said.

“She has a reputation for building a culture of community everywhere she goes,” he said,” and that leadership style has manifested in beneficial results for our students along the way.”

DeFrank and Trustees Tiffany Stoker Madsen and Hugh Awtrey served on the board work group that facilitated the search, including garnering community feedback, on behalf of the board. The search spanned the state and included multiple community and staff meetings, input sessions and opportunities and a 30-member interview panel, CUSD said.

Folmer beat out 10 other people who applied for the position, including five of her Clovis Unified colleagues who the board interviewed.

California school districts can hold candidate interviews in closed session, shielding the identity of the other applicants and the board’s deliberations from the public.

Folmer will replace Superintendent Eimear O’Brien, who is retiring at the end of the school year. O’Brien has led the district since 2017.

Thanking O’Brien for her leadership and mentorship, Folmer said she looks to O’Brien as a role model, especially for how she led the district throughout the pandemic.

“She did so with dignity and class, and she put at the forefront what was best for our kids and employees,” Folmer said. “I intend to continue that model.”

Folmer will be shadowing O’Brien over the next few months, which is why a mid- to late-March hire was important to the school board.

Much like O’Brien and other district leaders, Folmer possesses the unique perspective of being a parent of Clovis Unified students, a seventh grader and a high school junior.

“When you’re a parent and your children attend the district in which you are leading, it gives you a great perspective on how systems work out, like the student experiences or the parent experiences,” she said. “And it helps shape how we best meet the needs of families.”

Among her first “essential” priorities in meeting those needs will be students and their academic, physical and social-emotional success, she said, and to treat staff as “the most precious resource of all.”

“Because they are.”

The school board will vote on Folmer’s contract at its March 29 meeting.