Licensed Preschool in San Fernando, CA

Preschool in San Fernando

As of August 2026

In San Fernando, 24 providers are listed with California Department of Social Services' Community Care Licensing Division (CCLD), 12 of them centers and 12 family child care homes, a 50%/50% split. The near-even split gives San Fernando both center-based and home-based options, together accounting for roughly 1039 licensed slots citywide and an average of about 43 slots per provider. Preschool coverage is the widest age band on the roster, at 92% of providers. CloverMap lets parents browse the full, verified list of San Fernando providers directly.

What to know about childcare in San Fernando

Of the 24 providers on San Fernando's roster, 12 are centers and 12 are family child care homes, a 50%/50% split. A center generally has multiple staff, dedicated classroom space, and set hours across the week, while a family child care home operates inside a caregiver's house with a smaller group and often more flexible scheduling. Both formats appear in San Fernando in meaningful numbers, so the choice tends to come down to group size and setting rather than availability alone — a family that prefers a home-like environment has real options here, and so does a family that wants a larger, more structured program.

San Fernando's licensed capacity totals 1039 across its 24 providers, an average of 43 children per provider. This citywide figure is the sum of very different scales: centers with dozens of enrolled slots sit alongside family child care homes licensed for a handful of children each. That spread is normal for a roster with both formats represented, and it means the 43-slot average is more useful as a general sense of scale than as a prediction for any specific provider a family might contact.

Not every provider in San Fernando serves every age group. 22 of the 24 providers (92%) cover preschool-age children, 12 (50%) cover school-age, and infant/toddler coverage sits at 14 and 14 providers (58%/58%). That distribution is a useful filter before contacting any single provider, since it narrows a full roster of 24 down to just the subset that actually serves the age a family needs.

California Department of Social Services' Community Care Licensing Division (CCLD) is the state agency responsible for licensing child care centers and family child care homes throughout California, including San Fernando. A license from CCLD confirms that a provider has met the state's requirements to operate legally — covering staffing, group size, and the physical space where care is provided. Centers and family child care homes are licensed under separate categories, which is why San Fernando's roster shows both formats represented rather than a single uniform provider type. Both categories fall under the same statewide agency, so a family comparing a center and a home in San Fernando is comparing two providers licensed under the same overall framework, just different administrative categories within it.

With 12 centers and 12 homes nearly matched in San Fernando, neither format dominates the search — parents can reasonably compare both without one being the clear default. That balance is worth keeping in mind when narrowing a shortlist, since San Fernando doesn't skew heavily toward either format the way some cities do, and a side-by-side comparison of a few of each is a practical way to start. One provider on San Fernando's roster, "AMANECER/CA CHILDREN'S ACADEMY", illustrates the kind of listing CloverMap surfaces alongside licensing category, reported capacity, and age-group coverage for the rest of the city's providers.

For a family narrowing a list of San Fernando providers, the most useful filters tend to be format (center versus family child care home), age group served, and reported capacity — all of which are available on the roster itself before a single phone call is made. Out of 24 total providers, cross-referencing those three data points typically narrows a citywide list down to a short set worth contacting directly, which is a more efficient starting point than reaching out to every listed provider in San Fernando one by one.