Eight hundred kindergarten through sixth-graders and 40 teachers will be among the first to walk the halls of the new Anza Trail School in Sahuarita when it opens Jan. 4.
Three of the school's buildings will be accessible when the students arrive next week and by March the entire 110,000-square-foot campus on South Rancho Sahuarita Boulevard will be completed, said Kathy Shiba, principal of Anza Trail School.
Another 300 students — seventh- and eighth-graders — and 30 teachers will join the school for the start of the 2007 school year next August. That will bring the student population to 1,100. The school's student capacity is 1,200. Thirty-seven classrooms will be ready for students and teachers next week and the final 37 classrooms for the older students will be finished in three months.
The Sahuarita Unified School District is in desperate need of the classroom space.
People are also reading…
Last year, when Shiba was principal at Sahuarita Middle School, she oversaw 900 students at a school that was built for 600.
"We had classrooms in the hallways, a classroom in the gym. We divided one classroom into four classrooms. We had to put teachers and students wherever we could," Shiba said. "The primary and the intermediate (schools) are just as full as the middle school."
The $17 million Anza Trail School was paid for with money from bonds, the state Schools Facility Board and $2 million from the town of Sahuarita. The town kicked in money for recreational facilities — football, soccer, softball and baseball fields; eight basketball and two tennis courts, a playground and a walking track — to be shared by the school and the public.
Anza Trail also will have a gym, a library, three computer labs and a portable computer lab with both Macs and PCs, a wrestling room and a cafetorium — a combination cafeteria and auditorium with a stage and back doors opening onto an outdoor amphitheater for larger productions.
Though the facilities will be brand-new, the aspect of the K-8 campus that excites Shiba and second-grade teacher Liz Myers most is the opportunity for the older students to mentor the younger ones.
Myers has been teaching out of a portable classroom and is eager to get into her permanent room at Anza Trail. The biggest change for her students will be attending school with older kids.
"At the school now our kids are the oldest kids and they will be going to a school that goes up to eighth grade," Myers said. "It's nice because it offers mentoring opportunities with older kids. I think some parents might be worried about the influences of older kids, but I think it will be good."
