While school districts across metro Phoenix grapple with shrinking enrollment, Cactus High School opened Monday with 360 additional students after Peoria Unified School District closed two elementary schools and reshuffled hundreds of children across the district.
In March, the Peoria Unified school board voted to close Pioneer Elementary School and Kachina Elementary School because of an anticipated $21 million budget deficit, in part caused by declining enrollment. Kristi Hammer, the principal of Cactus High, attributed declining enrollment there being little room for continued development within the district boundaries and a lack of new families moving to the area.
The school was previously a ninth-12th grade campus but switched to a seventh-12th
model to accommodate students moving from Kachina and Pioneer. Those two schools enrolled students from kindergarten-eighth grade.
Hammer said the school saw an influx of 360 students on its first day back compared to last year's enrollment.
Jenna Preas was at Cactus High dropping off her daughter, Brogann Montano, who was starting her first day of eighth grade. Montano was previously enrolled at Canyon Elementary School, where her mother works.
While Canyon Elementary didn’t close, its seventh and eighth graders moved to Cactus High as part of the district’s reconfiguration. It will also be taking some of the younger students from Kachina Elementary and Pioneer Elementary. Preas said her daughter was happy to be at the high school, particularly since her friends from Canyon would be transferring with her. Montano added that she was excited to make new friends at her new campus.
Preas, who continues to work at Canyon Elementary, said she was shocked by the decision to close and reconfigure a number of schools within Peoria Unified. But Preas was excited to get back to work, with Canyon Elementary having about 100 new students on campus, she said.
Reconfiguration allows for new electives, sports opportunities
Hammer said Cactus High has a waitlist of about 100 students, with many of those students coming from charter schools and out of district.
Around 40% of Cactus High School’s students either live outside the district or would be assigned to other schools in the district, Hammer said. That’s largely due to the opportunities for electives that are offered to high school students.
With the reconfiguration of the school, those opportunities will now be offered to students in seventh and eighth grades, she said. Some of the school's popular electives include robotics and digital media, she said.
Ethan Torres, who was starting his first day of ninth grade, said he was excited about taking a robotics class. Torres attended Pioneer Elementary, completing eighth grade before the school closed.
“I made a lot of memories over there. So it’s kind of sad. That was a place I wanted to revisit in the future,” Ethan Torres said of Pioneer’s closure.
His father, Carlos Torres, said he never noticed that enrollment appeared to be declining over the years. But he was glad that his son was able to go through the eighth-grade level before the school’s closure and would have concerns about seventh- and eighth-grade students being on the same campus as high school seniors.
But Hammer said the high school students are largely separated from the high school students, noting that a number of other districts in Arizona have seventh-12th grade campuses. Students may pass one another one the way to some classes, but will have separate lunches, restrooms and dances, she said.
Students can be on the same sports teams, but Hammer said that will allow for junior high-level students to get coaching at a varsity level.
"Anything new can be scary. But our teachers have been prepping for this for a while now, and they're excited," Hammer said.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: As Peoria schools close, Cactus High welcomes hundreds of students
