This article has been updated to reflect the new location of the Sept. 26 community meeting at Tucson High Magnet School.
The Tucson Unified School District is discussing ways to cope with declining enrollment, including school consolidations, closures and making grade range adjustments. Its slogan for this process is “Reimagining Our Schools Together.”
Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo told press in August that he’s not certain he’ll be recommending school closures specifically to the governing board, but that six to 10 schools should expect some sort of impact over the next several years.
If a school is recommended for consolidation, that would mean the student body moves from one closing school to another campus. A closure would mean shutting a school down without any alternative. A grade range adjustment would shrink the range of grades a school encompasses. For example, a K-8 school would then become grades K-5.
TUSD, Southern Arizona’s largest school district, was home to about 39,000 students across 88 schools last school year. That represented a 3% enrollment decline from the previous year, and 7% decline since 2021.
Trujillo said the district is losing kids to charter schools and the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) voucher program, while birth rates continue to fall. The vouchers fund students enrolling in private schools, microschools or those who are homeschooled.
“Five years ago, the population of K-12 age students that were zoned to a TUSD school, meaning in-district students, was over 56,000. Now, it's just above 52,500,” Trujillo said.
Data from the ESA department’s latest report shows close to 900 students who were attending TUSD schools enrolled in the voucher program from 2017-2026.
At the governing board’s [most recent meeting](
members approved a timeline that has community engagement sessions slated for later this month, meetings with potentially affected schools in the fall and the superintendent’s recommendations scheduled to be presented publicly in December.
“There better be no less than a hundred people at every session. This has to be massively publicized. We have to recruit people,” Trujillo told the board.
Trujillo has made it clear that he’s prioritizing transparency in the consolidation and closure process. He vowed to notify potentially affected families and staff of his recommendations before they’re publicized in December. He also said that if the district doesn’t see substantial turnout at engagement sessions, he’ll plan more.
The community sessions are scheduled for Sept. 21 at Sahuaro High; Sept. 23 at Cholla High; and Sept. 26 at Tucson High.
The superintendent has also called in third-party consultant De la Cruz Leadership Solutions to help with the process. Their contract cost the district $75,000.
“Having professional assistance here for us is very much a safeguard and it's also good for the authenticity of the process,” he said.
There are also two other advisory groups involved, including an internal task force and superintendent advisory committee made of city ward representatives, county district representatives, teachers’ union members, principals and others.
Several board members voiced concerns to Bill de la Cruz, of De la Cruz Leadership Solutions, and to Trujillo that the timeline feels rushed. Member Jennifer Eckstrom voted against the plan, citing complaints from advisory committee members that it doesn’t adequately represent stakeholders.
“It’s really top-heavy. I don’t feel like it’s community based and I don’t know how we change that now,” she said.
Member Sadie Shaw also voted down the plan. She said there should be virtual options for the engagement sessions in case families could not attend in person.
Trujillo assured the board and members of the press that he won’t be making the same mistakes TUSD made in its last two rounds of school closures in 2010 and 2012. He called those “volatile processes” which “were characterized by a lack of community input, a lack of meaningful opportunities for the parents and the community members and even the employees to offer any kind of feedback.” He added neighborhood residents also were left wondering what would happen to the vacant buildings once the schools closed.
Trujillo said TUSD is using other school districts’ closure processes to better inform how to go about this one.
Last November, the Amphitheater Unified School District notified parents and staff that four elementary schools could be closing in the summer of 2026 due to low enrollment. By January, the board voted to shut those schools down and consolidate with others in the district despite loud outcry from parents and teachers.
“With other districts going through this, parents have been frustrated because they go to meetings and they feel like the decision’s already made and they're just there as kind of a formality,” Trujillo told press at an August conference.
Back in February, he told AZPM that “the physical reconfiguration” of the district was inevitable in the next three years, given the shifting demographics of the Tucson area.
“These are very difficult conversations: school closures and consolidations. That's not just about closing buildings. It's about closing memories. It's about closing — in a lot of cases — the most important chapters in people's lives, traditions, memories. All of those passions ignite in that process,” Trujillo said. “That’s why, if that’s going to be considered, it has to be done in a very thoughtful, transparent way.”
Parents attending the engagement session later this month can register their children for childcare and will receive food on site.
Trujillo spoke to KJZZ in an interview that aired Tuesday. You can listen to it here.
