MESA, AZ — As public school districts continue to try and figure out how to deal with declining enrollment, the state’s largest district, Mesa Public Schools, is taking a different approach with its smaller campuses.
In the 5th grade class at Lehi Elementary, about 45 students are being taught by three staff members, two teachers and a teaching assistant. In the portable out back behind the main building, there are two walls that can open up with a sliding door or wood panels.
On Monday morning, students learned math together in the middle portion of the portable with the student teacher at the front, educating students while a teacher walks around and keeps an eye on the kids.
Students learn together for a portion of the day but then split and move into their main classrooms with their assigned teacher to work at a smaller scale.
“I like that it's a smaller school because it can keep everyone safe and communicative,” said Cesar Martinez, a 5th grader at Lehi Elementary.
Lehi is one of 17 schools part of the district’s Small Community Schools of Practice. These are campuses with fewer than several hundred students and they each have an emphasis in either certain subjects or teaching models.
Principal Teja McFarlane says they have almost 400 students at the school and their focus is on team teaching, whilst another school, for example, Kerr Agriscience Center, is emphasizing learning through agriscience and environmental sustainability.
Dr. Matthew Strom, the incoming superintendent for Mesa Public Schools, says they hope to have more than 30 schools part of the Small Community Schools of Practice starting next school year.
“In the system of attempting to live into this, it oftentimes boils down to, can we run these smaller schools into such a fiscally efficient manner? Can we run our district office functioning in a fiscally efficient manner so that we can help our small schools survive and live into our portrait and promise at the same time?” Strom questioned.
When asked if he feels the small schools model is sustainable, Strom says they’re going to “figure that out.”
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“We’re on current year funding in the state of Arizona. We can’t promise that if a declining enrollment season of 4,000 students happens, we can’t promise that we may not alter course,” he continued. “We think if we can plan and demography continues to project out and play out the way we think it does, we think we can live into a Mesa Public Schools system where we keep the majority of these learning hubs open for as long as we possibly can.”
The district is projecting an enrollment drop of about 1,800 students as birth rates decline and school choice expands. For some districts like Mesa, growth is difficult when there is nowhere to build new homes and bring in more affordable housing for new families. There are now more graduating seniors than there are kindergarteners coming into their district, and it’s not just Mesa but many other districts grappling with this change.
Phoenix Elementary School District, Cave Creek Unified, as well as the Roosevelt School District are closing down schools at the end of this academic year. The Isaac School District is currently in the middle of discussions about possibly closing down a couple of campuses with its financial crisis. Paradise Valley Unified closed three campuses last school year.
As the district works to figure out declining enrollment, Strom said they are currently in the middle of getting rid of portables, a step toward change with the continuing issue. The district started getting rid of the portables this school year. They are temporary buildings put up to help during the height of the district’s rapid growth.
“The celebration with all of that, we haven’t taken away any community learning hubs. We fought the battle and we’ve taken away what is equivalent to four elementary schools' worth of classroom space,” Strom said.
While the district is working toward solutions and adjusting to changing demographics and enrollment, Principal McFarlane says their model is working.
“Our students in the teaming grade levels, the early teaming levels, the third and fourth grade, their data was significantly higher growing in comparison to non-teaming grade levels,” McFarlane says. This is the school’s second year in the team teaching model and the first for it to be widespread across the school, compared to just a few classrooms last year.
In addition to seeing the school’s own preliminary assessment results grow, the school’s letter grade went from a ‘C’ two school years prior to a ‘B’ this last year.
