The Apache Junction governing board announced last evening that it was closing 2 schools, a middle school and an elementary school. AJUSD is similar in size to CCUSD so we decided to compare their school usage to CCUSD. Low and behold we find...
What! AJ had an 83% utilization and they are closing 2 schools. CCUSD has a 71% utilization and they are considering closing one school and opening another.
This is ludicrous. The district is clearly playing games. In the past all we heard was program capacity for middle and elementary schools was 650, now we hear that DSES can hold 850 and STMS can hold 1000+. Obviously capacity is only what the administration wants it to be.
The school facilities board generates these numbers based on reporting from the schools, so don't tell us that these numbers are not real. This district currently sits on 2,603 empty seats in P-8 and is overcrowded by 138 in the high school. Clearly some closure and reconfiguration is in order, but again NO ONE WANTS TO MAKE HARD CHOICES.
Instead of trying to spend 12 million of recovery act funds to build a new high school at overinflated Davis-Bacon prevailing wages, lets maximize the facilities we have to their fullest.
Our solution...
1) Use Old Black Mountain for high school ninth grade or Honors\AP\IB
2) Turn all schools into K-8, close DWES, DSES, and LMES
This would give us about 1000 per K-8 school. Utilization would look like...
There is some wiggle room, for example HTES and STMS could act as one campus and allocate room accordingly (maybe HTES is K-4 and STMS is 5-8), same with BMES and DAMS. We could even consolidate these schools 4 schools into 2 schools saving even more on administration like record keeping, principals, and assistant principals (have one principal and one AP for the lower grades).
If AJUSD can afford to close 2 schools than we can afford to close 3.
Buildings before teachers.
Update: You can find the AZSFB numbers here
That's a ridiculous idea...have you bothered to check out these schools? Maybe you should consider showing your face and actually have facts before you pop off with stupid comments.
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