After two months of public discussion, the ultimate decision to close four schools in the Amphitheater Public Schools district took less than 30 minutes the night of Jan. 13.
A unanimous 5-member school board voted to close Copper Creek, Donaldson, Holaway and Nash elementary schools at the end of this school year.
“With a heavy heart, I move to approve the superintendent’s recommendation,” said longtime board member Deanna Day.
“With a heavy heart, I make the second,” said Vicki Cox Golder, the longest-serving board member.
“Boo!” one audience member exclaimed after the vote.
“Shame on you!” said another.
One person applauded.
“This is not over,” yelled another.
“You are all going to get voted out,” said one man. He was among two people who continued to berate the board after its vote. Both were escorted out of the Canyon del Oro High School auditorium by Oro Valley Police Department officers.
Superintendent Todd Jaeger, JD, described his recommendation to close four schools as “sad but necessary.” It is “perhaps the most difficult in our district’s 132-year history.
“Tonight is not about a lack of success at these schools,” Jaeger emphasized. “It is about a change in the world around them.”
The longtime superintendent described that change as “a perfect storm.” He pointed to three specific inclement conditions in a written narrative and rationale for the recommendations:
•Since 2007, Arizona’s birth rate has dropped by 36%. There are fewer students in the “natural” pipeline;
•Within Amphi’s boundaries, stretching from Prince Road in Tucson to the Pinal County line, more than $13.5 million in funding is directed toward state-funded Empowerment Scholarship Accounts — vouchers. There are 21 charter and private schools within Amphi’s perimeter.
“We are in a new era of ‘competition’ for public funds,” Jaeger told the board. “While we respect parental choice, the reality is that the $13.5 million leaving our district boundaries has a physical consequence;”
•Amphi has more square footage than it needs. It maintains capacity for nearly 19,000 students. Today, enrollment is near 10,500 students. “This past year alone, we saw a $4.3 million revenue loss due to enrollment shifts,” Jaeger said.
“Operating half-empty buildings or worse diverts millions of dollars away from other valuable classroom instruction and student services,” he wrote. “We cannot ignore the math of empty desks. … This recommendation is about moving resources toward students, not taking them away.”
Jaeger described the closures as “right-sizing our district — not out of mere desire for change, whim or irrational fear, but out of a fiduciary and moral necessity to preserve the excellence of Amphitheater Public Schools for future generations of students.”
Amphi’s ‘Promise of a Graduate’ “is a commitment to scholarship, citizenship, student achievement in all forms, and integrity,” Jaeger said. “To keep that promise, we must be brave enough to make the hard decisions that stabilize and protect our future — our students’ future.”
With approval of closures, he told the board, “you are ensuring Amphitheater remains a premier educational destination, focused and built upon students rather than square footage.”
Goal: No staff reductions
Through the consolidation process, “our goal remains zero reduction-in-force,” Jaeger said. “We will use natural attrition across the district to ensure every impacted employee has a home in Amphi next year.”
Amphi plans to use seniority in finding new assignments for support staff displaced by closures, he said.
With regard to teachers, “by law, we cannot use seniority,” he said. “We can use experience, professional preparation, skills and the like. We expect people to place people who are displaced. We have so much attrition.”
What’s ahead for Amphi
“A transition of this magnitude requires a precise map,” Jaeger told the board. Amphi has identified “welcoming schools” based on proximity to the four schools being closed, as well as the “preservation of our high school feeder patterns.”
He assured “families, the community, the teachers,” that “the spirit and the ‘Amphi Way’ will move with you” to welcoming schools, “from Day 1.”
Jaeger said he is sensitive to the concerns of special needs students. “We certainly understand the personal impact this has on people,” he said.
Many special education staff would be traveling with special needs students to their new schools, he said. Those students “will see their peers in one form or another,” Jaeger added.
The superintendent said Amphi has “communicated with the individual parents” of special needs children.
“I’m sorry, sir, but that is not true,” an audience member said.
“We are willing to work with people,” Jaeger responded.
“We’re a district of people, not just buildings,” he told an audience near 100. “Our schools are not just buildings; they are communities.”
Amphi does plan to conduct “legacy celebrations” at each of the four schools prior to their closing, Jaeger noted.
Futures for its buildings
The district is “exploring options for adaptive reuse” of the four campuses, and it has had inquiries. Talks with governmental entities who might occupy the buildings “hold a great deal of potential,” Jaeger said.
Already, the Arizona Schools for the Deaf and Blind has announced its intent to enter a 5-year lease with Amphi for the Copper Creek campus, where ASDB wants to relocate students and staff from its Tucson campus (see related story).
Amphi board member Matt Kopec said Tucson City Council Ward 3 Member Kevin Dahl has reached out, “offering help and asking to be involved” with future uses for Holoway and Nash, both within Tucson’s city limits. “I appreciate that very much,” Kopec said.
Buildings cannot be sold to a private third party without voter approval, Jaeger said.