The numbers confirm what metro-area public school districts across Arizona say: They are losing students.
Recently released data from the Arizona Department of Education indicates the six largest school districts in Pima County, three in the metro Tucson area — Amphitheater, Tucson Unified School District, and Sunnyside have lost students over the last five years.
Three other suburban districts — Marana, Sahuarita and Vail — have all grown.
Some district administrators say the declining enrollment and resulting drop in state funding are forcing them to close neighborhood schools or right-size their districts. Tucson’s two oldest school districts: Amphi and TUSD will face this in 2026. Right-sizing school districts — an appropriate amount of campuses for the number of students they serve — is an issue for every Arizona school district.
Next week, Amphitheater Public Schools superintendent Todd Jaeger will make his formal recommendation to the Governing Board to close four schools in the 22-school district.
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“As enrollment decreases, stretching resources across too many campuses makes it increasingly difficult to sustain the strong academic programs, high-quality staffing, and facility improvements our students deserve,” Amphi Superintendent Todd Jaeger said in an email to parents and staff a few weeks ago.
Holaway Elementary and Nash Elementary are both within Tucson city limits, Donaldson is in unincorporated Pima County and Copper Creek is in Oro Valley. The schools combined — in kindergarten through fifth grade — served about 1,100 students in the 2023-24 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
The declining enrollment is due to two main factors, Amphi administrators say: The dropping birth rate in Pima County and the rising number of families using Arizona’s vouchers and Empowerment Scholarship Accounts to homeschool or attend private schools.
TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo agrees. His district is the largest in Southern Arizona with just under 40,000 students in 88 schools. But enrollment decline, combined with rising operating costs and the elimination of COVID-era money, has caused a $21 million deficit, he says.
“We have to really rethink the design of this district and we have to rethink ways that we’re going to position this district to be successful with enrollment, to be competitive and to turn the tide of enrollment loss,” Trujillo told Arizona Luminaria before the Nov. 4 override election.
“There are K-12 families that are left are scrambling for more suburban areas outside of our district boundary because they’re looking for a cheaper cost of living,” he said.
“So you’ve got families moving to Sahuarita. You’ve got families moving to Vail. You’ve got families moving to Marana and even up the I-19 to Nogales and places like Rio Rico in Santa Cruz County.”
The numbers and projections over the last five years support this, education department data shows.
For example, in TUSD, state numbers reveal a 2.3% decline. At Tucson High, the 2022 number was 3,203. The projected number for 2026 is 2,638. That’s an 18% decline at the district’s flagship school, which turns 120 next year and is the oldest continuously run public high school in Arizona.
Among the six largest school districts in Pima County, the school with the biggest in-person learning growth since 2022 is Wakefield Middle School in TUSD, the data says. Wakefield shut down in 2013 in an attempt to right-size the district then. It reopened in its new format in 2020 and specializes in advanced academics for grades six through eight, where every class is accelerated or honors. It was at 144 in 2022 and is projected to reach 337 next year.
The Vail School District has the next two largest gains with Mica Mountain High School and Andrada Polytechnic High School projected to grow by 53% and 46%, respectively.
The largest decline was at Ocotillo Learning Center, which opened in 2010 in the Sunnyside district. The school includes a preschool, early childhood special education, kindergarten and first grade. State data says it was at 194 in 2022 and is projected to have 65 students next year.
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