Local opinion: TUSD School Closures: Independent Research Report

Tucson Unified School District has a serious financial problem. Enrollment has declined, revenue has fallen with it, and maintaining underused buildings costs money.

But before TUSD permanently closes neighborhood schools, Tucson should examine another number: Approximately 52,500 K-12-age children still live within TUSD boundaries, according to Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo, while projected TUSD enrollment is about 35,000 students.

Those numbers cannot simply be subtracted. TUSD enrolls some students from outside its boundaries, and the figures come from different measures. But they raise an important question:

Where are the children who live within TUSD actually going to school?

Some attend charter schools. Others attend private schools, participate in Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program, are homeschooled, or attend other public districts.

That distinction matters when deciding whether to close a school.

Imagine two elementary schools, each enrolling 300 students. If only 325 elementary-age children live around one school, it may have a demographic problem. If 500 children live around the other but only 300 attend TUSD, that school has, at least partly, an enrollment-share problem.

Closing the second school may reduce expenses, but it does not answer why neighborhood families chose alternatives.

TUSD should therefore publish, for every school considered for closure, how many school-age children live within its attendance area, how many attend TUSD, how many attend alternatives, and how those numbers have changed.

There is another possible use for some of TUSD’s excess classroom capacity: smaller classes.

Research does not show that reducing a class from 23 students to 22 automatically produces better results. But substantial class-size reductions, particularly in early elementary grades and among higher-need students, have produced measurable benefits.

Tennessee’s Project STAR, one of the best-known randomized studies of class size, compared classes averaging about 15 students with regular classes of roughly 22. Students in smaller classes generally performed better academically, with later research finding longer-term benefits.

Could TUSD use declining enrollment to create targeted K-3 classes of perhaps 15 to 18 students and make neighborhood schools more attractive to families?

That question should be considered alongside administrative spending.

Arizona Auditor General data show TUSD devoted about 48.5% of operational spending to instruction in fiscal year 2025, compared with a statewide district average of about 52.1%. These figures require caution because many necessary services are classified outside direct instruction. They nevertheless justify examining whether additional administrative and noninstructional savings are possible.

Before closing schools, TUSD should present two comparable budgets.

The first should show the net recurring savings from each proposed school closure, after additional transportation, transition, receiving-school staffing, facility and other costs.

The second should show a school-preservation and enrollment-recovery alternative, examining administrative and other noninstructional reductions, smaller classes, neighborhood demographics and strategies for attracting families back to TUSD.

Some school consolidation may ultimately prove necessary. The comparison should not begin by assuming otherwise.

But closing a neighborhood school is difficult to reverse. Before doing it, Tucson deserves answers to four questions:

How many children live in the neighborhood? Where are they going to school? What will closing their school actually save? And what alternatives were considered?

Those answers would give the Governing Board and the public a better foundation for deciding what TUSD should look like in the years ahead.