Cave Creek USD recommends closing two elementary campuses; parents and staff urge alternatives

Cave Creek Unified School District officials recommended closing Desert Sun Academy and Long Mountain Elementary School, rezoning affected students and moving sixth-graders to Sonoran Trails Middle School as part of a proposal to reduce the district’s five elementary campuses to three and address declining enrollment and budget shortfalls, district staff said at a public listening session.

District administrators presented enrollment and finance data that they said underpinned the recommendation. "Enrollment equals dollars," said Frank Hendrickson, assistant superintendent for human resources. He summarized the district’s demographer findings and the facilities audit and described the committee’s work to identify options for consolidating campuses.

The finance presentation by the district chief financial officer, identified in the session as Dr. Pletnick, quantified the problem: the district’s weighted ADM for the elementary grades was 2,284 (as of Nov. 11), and the district’s base funding per pupil in the presentation was $5,013. The district’s elementary schools, the presenters said, were operating at roughly 47% average capacity; the facilities committee estimated that consolidating to three elementary sites would raise average elementary capacity to about 60%. Plentnick said the district modeled a conservative 12.5% loss of students following closures and projected roughly $700,000 (conservative) to $838,000 in annual savings from the proposed consolidations, depending on final assumptions about enrollment and operating costs.

Why it matters

Administrators told the audience that ongoing declines in birth rates and enrollment are shrinking the district’s funding and that fixed facility costs make small campuses expensive to operate. The district also cited state facility funding formulas that pay a higher percentage of repair costs for some campuses than others; the presentation listed Black Mountain and Desert Willow as covered at 100% for certain state repair funding, Horseshoe Trails at 68% and Long Mountain at 37%, figures district staff said…