Phoenix Union High School District - EdTribune AZ - Arizona Education Data

Four Districts Lost 14,882 Students in Eight Years

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Part of the Arizona Enrollment Series. Updated weekly.

The Isaac Elementary District^↗ is under state receivership. The Glendale Elementary District^↗ has closed five schools in two years. The Alhambra Elementary District^↗ just voted to shutter two more campuses. The Cartwright Elementary District^↗ has lost students every single year since at least 2018.

These four districts sit in a contiguous band across west and central Phoenix, serving some of the city's most heavily Hispanic, lowest-income neighborhoods. Together they enrolled 49,151 students in 2017-18. By 2025-26, that number had fallen to 34,269, a loss of 14,882 students, or 30.3%. Arizona as a whole lost 3.5% over the same period.

Four districts account for 38.0% of the state's entire enrollment decline.

The steepest falls

Isaac's trajectory is the most severe. The district lost 38.1% of its enrollment, falling from 6,798 to 4,210 students. It shed 694 students in 2025-26 alone, a 14.2% single-year drop that exceeded every prior year except the pandemic crash of 2020-21. Glendale Elementary lost 34.3%, falling from 12,513 to 8,220. Alhambra lost 26.9%, and Cartwright, the largest of the four at 12,665 students, lost 26.8%.

All four are in unbroken decline streaks stretching back to at least 2018. In no year during this period did any of the four add students, with one exception: Isaac gained 67 students in 2024-25 before losing 694 the following year.

The combined year-over-year losses show a pattern that should unsettle planners. After the pandemic cratered enrollment by 4,116 in 2020-21, the pace appeared to moderate: losses of 1,314 in 2021-22, then 1,958 and 1,177 in subsequent years. But 2025-26 reversed the easing. The four districts shed 2,266 students, the second-worst year on record, behind only COVID.

Who is leaving

These are overwhelmingly Hispanic communities. Isaac's student body is 92.2% Hispanic. Cartwright is 90.7%. Alhambra is 79.3%, and Glendale is 73.3%. The combined Hispanic enrollment across the four districts fell from 40,448 to 28,667, a loss of 11,781 students, or 29.1%.

The districts also serve high concentrations of students whose instructional programs carry elevated per-pupil costs. In 2025-26, 85.4% of Isaac's students were classified as economically disadvantaged, along with 90.0% of Alhambra's, 79.7% of Cartwright's, and 64.4% of Glendale's. (Arizona's statewide economically disadvantaged rate jumped from 36.1% to 51.9% between 2024 and 2025 due to a Community Eligibility Provision reporting change, so these district-level figures may be inflated by the same methodological shift.) English learners make up 44.8% of Isaac's enrollment and 36.5% of Cartwright's, well above the state average.

Each departing student carries funding with them. Alhambra Superintendent Cecilia Maes told KTAR that the district loses approximately $12,000 for every student who leaves. At that rate, the combined 14,882-student loss across the four districts represents a funding reduction approaching $178 million annually compared to 2017-18 levels.

A pipeline that keeps shrinking

Kindergarten enrollment is the leading indicator for elementary districts. Across the four districts combined, kindergarten fell from 4,851 in 2017-18 to 3,058 in 2025-26, a 37.0% decline. In every year, fewer kindergartners entered these districts than eighth graders left them, a structural deficit that guarantees continued erosion even if the kindergarten count stabilizes.

The gap between the two lines is the annual enrollment the districts cannot replace. In 2025-26, 3,058 kindergartners entered while 3,904 eighth graders graduated out, a net pipeline deficit of 846 students before accounting for any mid-year departures or transfers.

Closures and receivership

The enrollment decline has forced building closures across all four districts, but Isaac's situation is the most acute. In January 2025, the Arizona State Board of Education placed Isaac under state receivership after the district overspent by an estimated $22 million and misrepresented its finances to the Arizona Department of Education. The Maricopa County Treasurer cut off funding until debts were resolved, and teachers worked three days without pay before emergency measures restored operations.

State-appointed receiver Keith Kenny ordered the closure of Moya Elementary and P.T. Coe Elementary despite the governing board's vote against it:

"I've found the board to be irresponsible fiscally in voting not to close the two schools." -- Keith Kenny, state-appointed receiver, KJZZ, May 2025

Kenny estimated that restoring solvency would take five to 10 years. The district took a $25 million loan from Tolleson Union High School District at 6% interest, pledging Isaac Middle School as collateral.

Glendale Elementary has closed five schools in two years, including Coyote Ridge, Imes, and Sine elementary schools. In 2021, the district's assistant superintendent of finance said Glendale would need to grow by about 4,000 students, sustained for nine years, to change course. Instead, enrollment fell from 10,418 in 2020-21 to 8,220 in 2025-26.

Alhambra voted in early 2026 to close Valencia Newcomer Academy and Choice Learning Academy after the 2025-26 school year. Valencia, a school established in 2018 to serve immigrant and refugee students with English language instruction, had dwindled to just 22 students. The closures will save $1.4 million, but Superintendent Maes acknowledged the shortfall is much larger:

"The fact is, our shortfall is much greater than that. And so, we've looked at other creative ways of utilizing our staff, adjusting our staffing..." -- Cecilia Maes, Alhambra superintendent, KTAR, Feb. 2026

Multiple forces, one outcome

No single factor explains a 30% enrollment loss in eight years. District leaders across the Valley consistently point to three converging pressures: declining birth rates dating to the 2008 recession, housing affordability that has pushed young families out of older neighborhoods, and competition from charter schools and Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) voucher program.

The birth rate explanation has some structural support. The children entering kindergarten in 2025-26 were born in 2019-20. Maricopa County birth rates have declined since 2007, and the Phoenix metro area's population growth is now driven almost entirely by migration rather than natural increase. But migration does not distribute evenly. Newer families tend to settle in outer-ring suburbs, while the older, denser neighborhoods these four districts serve are not the destination of choice.

The ESA program is a subject of fierce debate. A Common Sense Institute Arizona report argued in 2024 that demographic shifts, not vouchers, primarily drive the decline. But the program has grown rapidly, with nearly 89,000 students using ESAs and annual costs exceeding $1 billion. Whether ESA students are leaving these specific inner-ring districts or come disproportionately from other areas is not clear from enrollment data alone.

Charter school competition is another factor that enrollment data cannot cleanly separate. Arizona has no charter flag in its state enrollment files, making it impossible to track sector-level shifts with precision. The state has approximately 580 charter schools enrolling an estimated 232,000 students, but which districts those students would otherwise attend is unknown.

What enrollment data can show is that these four districts are not merely shrinking at the state average rate. They are declining eight to 10 times faster than Arizona as a whole. Something specific to these neighborhoods, whether it is housing costs, school quality perceptions, program competition, or demographic turnover, is compounding the statewide trend.

The downstream question

These four districts are PK-8 feeders. Their graduates flow primarily into Phoenix Union High School District^↗, which peaked at 27,898 students in 2022-23 and has since lost 4,328 students, a 15.5% decline in three years. The shrinking pipeline from the inner-ring elementary districts means Phoenix Union's losses are likely to deepen.

Across Arizona, more than 20 public schools closed or began closing in 2025, spanning districts from Roosevelt (five schools) to Kyrene (six schools) to Scottsdale (two schools). Beth Lewis, executive director of Save Our Schools Arizona, called it "an unprecedented clip of school closures." The four inner-ring districts examined here are at the epicenter of that wave, but the closures are rippling outward.

The kindergarten pipeline ensures these districts will continue to shrink. How many buildings can close, how many staff positions can be cut, and how many consolidations can happen before the remaining schools are too far from the families they serve to function as neighborhood institutions — that is the practical problem Isaac's receiver and Alhambra's superintendent are trying to solve right now.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

One in Three Arizona Districts Just Hit Rock Bottom

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Part of the Arizona Enrollment Series. Updated weekly.

Mesa Unified District^↗ enrolled 52,975 students in 2025-26. It is the largest school district in Arizona, and it has never been smaller. Neither has Chandler, Tucson, Peoria, Gilbert, Paradise Valley, Phoenix Union, Dysart, Scottsdale, or Washington Elementary. The state's 10 biggest districts at their all-time enrollment low collectively serve 305,616 students, 28.5% of Arizona's total. They are all shrinking at once.

Across Arizona, 175 districts with at least 100 students hit their all-time enrollment low in 2025-26. That is one in three. Against them, only 80 districts reached a record high, and nearly 60% of those are charter operators. For every district at a peak, 2.2 are at a trough. More than half the students in the state, 52%, now attend a district that has never had fewer of them.

The acceleration nobody planned for

Arizona's enrollment peaked at 1,145,557 in 2019-20. Since then the state has lost 72,026 students, a 6.3% decline. But the trajectory is not a gentle slope. It is a steepening curve.

The annual losses have grown every year since 2022-23: 6,920, then 10,772, then 15,582, then 25,998. The 2025-26 loss alone is nearly quadruple the 2022-23 figure. Across all districts with at least 100 students, 327 of 519 lost enrollment in 2025-26, 63%.

This is not a COVID aftershock. The pandemic year of 2020-21 was brutal, with a 33,829-student drop. But 2021-22 brought a robust 21,075-student recovery. What followed was different: a sustained, compounding decline with no recovery year in sight.

A list that reads like a who's who

The 175 districts at their all-time low include names that would have seemed invulnerable a decade ago. Paradise Valley Unified District^↗ has lost 6,218 students since 2017-18, a 19.9% decline, with enrollment falling every single year for eight consecutive years. Washington Elementary School District^↗ has shed 20.4% from its 2018-19 peak, losing 4,623 students. Scottsdale Unified District^↗ is down 10.4% from just eight years ago.

Six of the 10 largest all-time-low districts have lost more than 13% from their peaks. Chandler Unified District #80^↗, down 13.5%. Tucson Unified District^↗, down 14.4%. Phoenix Union High School District^↗, down 15.5%. Mesa, down 15.9%.

Ten districts have declined in every single year of the nine-year dataset, the maximum possible streak of eight consecutive annual drops. The list includes Paradise Valley (25,027 students), Cartwright Elementary District^↗ (12,665), Alhambra Elementary District^↗ (9,174), and Glendale Elementary District^↗ (8,220). Another 28 districts have decline streaks of five years or longer. These are not temporary dips. They are structural contractions.

Where growth still exists, it tells its own story

The 80 districts at record highs are disproportionately charter operators: 47 of the 80, or 59%, match charter-like naming patterns (Academy, Inc., LLC, Prep). The largest traditional districts at their peak are outer-ring suburbs: Queen Creek Unified District^↗ (15,408), Vail Unified District^↗ (15,072), Agua Fria Union (10,240), Maricopa Unified (9,545). The biggest charter entity at its peak, American Leadership Academy, enrolls 17,732.

The contrast sharpens the picture. Inner-ring suburbs and urban cores are hemorrhaging students. Outer-ring suburbs and charter operators are absorbing some of them. Arizona's enrollment has not simply declined; it has redistributed, with the net flow moving outward and toward private operators.

Birth rates, vouchers, COVID, and ICE

The acceleration has no single cause. Sherman Dorn, an education policy researcher at Arizona State University, identified four converging forces in a December 2025 analysis: declining birth rates, Arizona's expansive school choice ecosystem, pandemic-era disruptions that permanently altered families' relationships with their schools, and more recently, immigration enforcement fears that have led some families to withdraw children entirely.

The birth rate factor is demographic bedrock. Arizona's total fertility rate fell from 2.4 in 2007 to 1.6 in 2023, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. The state's Office of Economic Opportunity projects that births will barely grow for the next 15 years, and that deaths will exceed births as early as 2029. Even as Arizona's adult population grows through migration, fewer of those migrants are bringing school-age children.

The ESA voucher program has grown into a force that compounds the demographic pressure. As of early 2026, more than 100,000 students are enrolled in Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account program, up from roughly 11,000 before universal eligibility in 2022. The program now costs approximately $1 billion annually from the General Fund.

"It is taking a huge bite out of TUSD. $37 million of potential district funds were directed to ESAs in 2024." — TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo, AZPM, Feb. 2026

In Tucson's Amphitheater School District, more than $14 million in ESA funding flows to students within the district's boundaries while the district itself has voted to close four schools to save $5 million. The arithmetic is hard to ignore.

Buildings emptying, budgets breaking

The fiscal consequences are already showing up in the Arizona Auditor General's annual risk analysis. As of January 2026, nine districts are classified at the highest financial risk level, with nine more approaching it. That represents a doubling from the prior year, when only two districts held the highest-risk designation.

"Fiscal year 2025 was really the first year that I think we're seeing some of the impact of districts not having those monies available any longer." — Meghan Hieger, Arizona Auditor General's Office, KTAR, Feb. 2026

The convergence of expired COVID relief funds and accelerating enrollment decline has left districts making choices that were unprecedented five years ago. Kyrene Elementary District^↗, which now enrolls 12,672 students in a system designed for 20,000, voted unanimously to close six schools to save $5.8 million annually. Scottsdale Unified is considering repurposing up to eight schools. Isaac School District^↗, now flagged as highest financial risk, has already closed three schools.

Small districts face an existential question

Half of the 175 all-time-low districts enroll fewer than 500 students. These 89 districts collectively serve just 22,075 students, an average of 248 each. At the other extreme, six districts above 25,000 students account for 220,951 students at their all-time lows.

The small districts face a different calculus than Mesa or Tucson. A 10% enrollment loss in a 300-student district means 30 fewer students, perhaps one fewer classroom, but also a per-pupil funding cut that can eliminate a teaching position. State Superintendent Tom Horne has raised the possibility of district consolidation as an alternative to individual school closures, arguing that "there are efficiencies of size" and that without them, districts "can't pay teachers properly." The last time two Arizona districts actually merged was in 2001, when the Kingman Elementary and Mohave Union High School districts combined. Legislative efforts since then have failed.

The immigration enforcement question adds a layer of uncertainty that the data cannot resolve. Dorn noted in his analysis that some districts expected enrollment growth but instead saw declines that superintendents attribute to families leaving the country or keeping children home. The data shows the enrollment drop. It cannot distinguish between families who moved, families who switched to ESAs, families who enrolled in charters, and families who withdrew out of fear.

What comes next

The gap between districts at record lows and record highs has widened every year since 2022. In 2023, the split was nearly even: 142 at lows, 141 at highs. By 2026, it was 175 to 80. The trajectory suggests 2026-27 will push that ratio further, particularly if the four forces Dorn identified continue to operate simultaneously.

For the 10 districts with eight-year decline streaks, the relevant question is no longer whether enrollment will recover. It is how to operate school systems designed for populations that no longer exist. Kyrene's answer is to close six buildings. Paradise Valley, which has shed a fifth of its students over eight years without yet announcing closures, will eventually face the same math.

Arizona's population is projected to grow by 900,000 over the next decade. Its school enrollment is moving in the opposite direction. The adults are arriving. The children are not.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.