Schools open, face growth issues

Students streamed into newly decorated classrooms Tuesday as administrators plan how to accommodate a seemingly endless growth spurt in the Sahuarita district.

While students get used to new teachers, new classrooms and in some cases new schools, school staff will take a count of new students by the end of the week to help in planning, District Superintendent Jay St. John said.

As Sahuarita High School fills up, the district plans to hold a community forum on the new high school this month.

The district also will seek town, community and state funds to support a police presence on campus that is threatened by a budget decision at the Arizona Department of Education.

Because of state funding issues, it appears unlikely a new high school will be built before August 2010, so the district this year will begin a conversation on whether to go to double-shifts in 2009, or year-round classes, or some other means of coping with enrollment growth. Officials were expecting about 1,515 students in a building designed for 1,200.

At a school board meeting in July, St. John said there are about 4,600 students enrolled in district schools. The district has close to 600 employees, nearly half of them teachers. There are about 40 new positions this year, in part because voters approved a $1 million budget override that will pay for about 20 new elementary school teachers, one of four spending measures approved by voters.

And there is no end in sight. In the face of a nationwide slump in housing, the town of Sahuarita has continued to grow and has issued 568 single family home permits in the first seven months of 2008, in part because Rancho Sahuarita has continued to average about 50 new home sales a month.

St. John said this week he hopes that media coverage of Sahuarita school crowding will help push the state’s new school funding arm to come up with some of the $13 million that the state tentatively approved several years ago for a second high school. The money fell victim to state budget problems this spring.

With the crowding in district schools, security is a growing issue, and the district faces the loss of state funding for its School Resource Officer, Mike Blevins of the Sahuarita Police Department. Blevins is a highly regarded presence on campus who has taught a “street law” class both to SHS students and to police officers around the state.

At the same time, a sophisticated, computer-controlled security camera system is being installed this week in Sopori Elementary School in Amado, the closest district school to the border with Mexico and one that has seen its share of cops and smugglers chase scenes involving the Border Patrol.

The camera system is designed to spot unusual movement and can be programmed to operate on a routine basis and to be controlled from the main campus in a way that will allow the school grounds to be monitored carefully.

The potential loss of school funding for the on campus police officer hit school board members hard, and St. John decided this week to appeal the decision by the School Safety and Prevention of the state Department of Education.

pfranchine@sahuaritasun.com | 547-9738