Amphitheater Public Schools will close up to five elementary schools next school year because of declining enrollment, the superintendent said in a letter to staff and parents this week.
Amphi will decide which schools to shutter by the end of December.
The declining enrollment is due to two main factors, Amphi administrators say: The dropping birthrate in Pima County and the rising number of families using Arizona’s vouchers and Empowerment Scholarship Accounts to homeschool or attend private schools.
Amphi Public Schools is 132 years old and includes 22 schools in pre-K through high school in north Tucson and Oro Valley. Enrollment data for last school year says Amphi had about 10,500 students across its 112 square miles.
“Enrollment in Amphi schools has declined nearly every year for the past decade. Last year, however, we saw a sudden $4.3 million loss due to a particularly steep decline,” Amphi Superintendent Todd Jaeger said in the letter. “The trend of declining enrollment continued into this year, with projected enrollment loss of about 300 students currently. A review of demographic forecasts gives us little reason to believe this will turn around for many years to come.”
Two years ago, Amphi had 11,835 students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
“Big-picture longer term, around the turn of the century, enrollment was just under 19,000 students districtwide,” Amphi Governing Board member Matt Kopec said. “Today we’re around 11,000 and change. So this is something that we’ve been dealing with for a little while. But the last couple years, it’s really accelerated.”
Right-sizing school districts — an appropriate amount of campuses for the number of students they serve — is an issue facing every Arizona school district.
“Districts are definitely under pressure. It’s a very tough thing because of how district education funding is done in the state of Arizona,” Kopec said. “It’s tied to enrollment. So if there are declines in enrollment then it puts pressure on every district.”
Amphi wants input from families at its website and emails to answers@amphi.com are encouraged, Kopec said.
Education notes
A fix to Proposition 414 Spanish: Prop 414, the Tucson Unified School District’s $45 million override question has a typo in the Spanish version, Pima County said this week.
“Presupuesto” — or budget in English — is misspelled in the Yes/Sí line of the proposition. The typo does not change the meaning of the word, the intent of the proposition, or how a Yes/Sí vote will be counted, the county says.
It is spelled correctly in the No/No line immediately below.
Reprinting the ballots could delay the start of the election for TUSD and Tucson voters who reside in the district, and result in missed deadlines, Pima County said in a news release. The county will mail the ballots with the typo but the in-person ballots or those sent electronically are correct.
Prop 414 might ring a bell: As TUSD tries to pass an override for the first time in more than 30 years, its proposition number happens to be the same as one from last spring.
If Prop 414 passes, Southern Arizona’s largest school district would use a property tax hike to boost teacher pay and expand student programs among other plans. It has nothing to do with the failed proposition from last March that tried to raise city sales tax to fund public safety and community programs.
“The elections department assigns prop numbers and they have a certain procedure they have to follow under statute,” the Pima County Superintendent’s office told Arizona Luminaria.
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