A new tuition-free preschool from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' Montessori network of schools opened in Glendale inside a senior living center and is intended to provide learning opportunities for both children and seniors.
Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, launched Bezos Academy in Washington state in 2020. The first five years of a child's life are critical for children to develop the skills needed for grade school, and he sought to increase access to early childhood development in underserved communities.
The program has since expanded to cities across the country, including five schools in Arizona.
Arizona ranks 45th in the U.S. among 4-year-olds enrolled in public preschool programs, according to the 2025 State of Preschool Yearbook
from the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. Head Start only serves families that fall at or below 100% of the federal poverty level, and according to the Arizona Department of Economic Security, there are 15,000 children and 9,000 families in the state waiting for the Child Care Assistance Program.
Bezos Academy Glendale - Sahuaro Glenn offers free tuition and meals for children ages 3 to 5 from households that fall at or below 400% of the federal poverty level, which is an income of $132,000 for a family of four. Kresta Horn, the head of school at the new Bezos Academy, said that threshold allows children who wouldn’t normally qualify for Head Start or are on the waitlist for child care assistance to start developing important skills.
The school emphasizes a “Montessori-inspired” approach to early childhood education that allows children to explore individual interests at their own pace. Students learn through one-on-one lessons with teachers on core subjects and basic life skills, such as table-setting and plant watering.
Horn said Bezos Academy Glendale - Sahuaro Glenn will have four classrooms by October 2026 and an additional classroom the following year. Each classroom has a capacity for 20 students with one teacher and one assistant teacher, for a total of 100 students by the 2027-28 school year.
The campus is not the first Bezos Academy to open in Arizona, but it is the first one not attached to an existing school. When Bezos Academy was looking to expand elsewhere in the state, Tommy Medina, chief people officer for the Glencroft Center for Modern Aging, reached out to offer the senior living center.
Preschool could help provide sense of purpose for senior residents
Medina said he hoped that establishing a preschool within the senior living center would provide residents with opportunities to engage with different age groups.
Residents there already have several volunteer opportunities, including running a thrift store, assisting with food donations or participating in art studio sessions. The Glencroft Center also allows residents to volunteer and house young adults who have aged out of the foster care system and provide employment opportunities for them.
Many residents struggle with depression, Medina said, and some don’t have families of their own, so the site's volunteer opportunities allow them to be like “surrogate-grandparents,” he said.
Horn said she sees the benefit as two-fold, as residents have a whole lifetime of knowledge to share.
School leaders plan for diverse volunteering opportunities
Bezos Academy Glendale has a volunteer coordinator for residents to help around the school. Volunteers could help with distributing lunches, reading stories to children, featuring their artwork around the school or assisting in the school’s garden.
The coordinator also verifies food handler permits or Department of Child Safety affidavits and a resident’s physical ability to determine if they are a good fit to be surrounded by active children, Horn said.
"Every resident has something to share if they want to share it and we need to build into that,” she said.
Before a child joins Bezos Academy, staff administer an “ages and stages questionnaire” that is meant to give educators a foundation of where a student’s development is at. The questionnaire also helps determine a student's growth before entering kindergarten.
The school is also looking to raise the bar for literacy, which has had a steady decline in Arizona since 2023. Data from the Center for the Future of Arizona shows the number of third-graders proficient in reading is 10 percentage points lower in 2025 than pre-pandemic levels, dropping to 36% since 2019.
Horn said research shows that adults who routinely read to children have proven to expand their early development. A 2026 study from Oxford University Press found that reading can also encourage children's empathy and self-reflection.
Students should enter kindergarten able to articulate their feelings and engage with learning material for more than 30 seconds, Horn said. She believes volunteer reading opportunities from residents can help with that.
Kim Cortright, the school's instructional and inclusion family specialist, said every child also goes through an “orientation period” before they enter the classroom. This helps educators and parents understand what support services students might need during their class instruction and beyond, such as speech therapy, at no or low cost to the parents.
"I've seen teachers work really, really hard with not a lot and do their very best, and it still isn't enough for the kids," she said.
Coverage of education solutions on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is partially supported by a grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation’s Arizona Community Collaborative Fund.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Jeff Bezos builds new Arizona preschool in unusual location
