Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind announced earlier this month its plans to shutter its Tucson campus, a beautiful sprawling gem of a facility along Speedway Blvd.
Why the move?
In a letter posted on ASDB’s website, school superintendent Annette Reichman echoed hardships we’ve heard from many a public school: They have less state and federal funds to serve students with more complex needs, coupled with declining enrollment due to lower birth rates that are also hurting finances.
Plus, that beautiful sprawling facility is a lot to keep up.
"(B)oth the Tucson campus and the Phoenix campus have deteriorating buildings and infrastructure," she wrote. "While the ASDB Facilities Team has done its best to keep both campuses safe and comfortable for staff and students, this is becoming less achievable, particularly on the Tucson campus. Given the ongoing budget shortfall, ASDB literally has no funds to allocate for building maintenance or renovation projects."
Aerial view of the iconic Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind campus in Tucson.
Reichman noted that she has spent the last 18 months attempting to find a path to longterm sustainability.
But searching for a new home isn't the only struggle the school has faced in recent history.
A quick consult with the Google Machine brings up a handful news stories about the school’s struggles in the past 18 months. Last April, KOLD spoke to parents who were upset about programming cuts, staff reduction and what the future holds for ASDB.
“My high school daughter has been telling me what they’ve been hearing from teachers, staff … the money issue, the money misspending and all of that. I’m like, ‘Oh, boy,’” parent Melissa Klaman told KOLD.
Still, Klaman told KOLD at the time that her children (all five of them were attending ASDB) were “thriving.”
For at least a decade, the ASDB has been on the State Auditor General’s radar. A 2012 audit report gave a less-than-stellar evaluation, the central issue being lackluster efforts to assess and promote student success. In 2022, a state audit led to 15 recommendations for ASDB to rectify ranging from aligning program fees with program costs, to establishing a multiyear capital plan and budget.
In a 24-month follow up report by the auditor, ASDB had implemented four of the 15 recommendations, was processing nine, and hadn't implemented two of the recommendations, including that it develop policies and procedures to periodically review student fees and voucher reimbursement. The other concern that hadn’t yet been satisfactorily addressed surrounded disclosing conflicts of interest, making those conflicts “available for public inspection, as required by statute.”
Something the school was working on in 2024, two years after the initial audit, was to take steps to formalize assessing student outcomes post-ASDB.
If ASDB has improved on that front, it’s hard to tell. After several days’ worth of research, specifically for this edition of the Education Agenda, we couldn’t find any significant data or information detailing ASDB student outcomes.
“Oh, boy,” indeed.
Then there’s the money, one of the main reasons Reichman gave for the school’s move.
Following ASDB’s 2022 audit, the state auditor concluded “ASDB has not developed and implemented a multiyear capital plan and projected capital budget, hindering its ability to address capital improvement needs in a timely and cost-effective manner.”
Based on the school’s recent board minutes and agendas, as well as a checkup by the state auditor in 2024, a significant amount of work has been devoted to putting that complaint to rest.
Still, here we are.
We’ve heard the adage: “When one door closes, another one opens.”
When Amphitheater Unified School District approved closure of four of its schools around Tucson, the doors opened for ASDB to move to a new campus – one that some have argued isn’t necessarily an improvement.
According to reports, within hours of Amphitheater’s governing board’s unanimous decision, the two institutions were already discussing transitioning ASDB to Amphitheater’s Copper Creek Elementary School. Theories are circulating that the door to ASDB moving might have been cracked opened before the decision to shutter Copper Creek was official.
Since school officials announced ASDB’s move earlier this month, more people – including area news outlets – have started paying attention.
When hundreds of members of the community descended on a public meeting earlier this month to protest the planned closure of the campus, the school abruptly canceled the meeting after answering only three audience questions.
A telling little anecdote: About two years ago, I pitched an editor on the idea of touring ASDB for a story. Arizona was new territory for me then, and I wanted to wrap my head around this important institution in Tucson.
The editor’s response:
“We don’t really care about them. I’d worry about something else.”
One is inclined to say that, had there been more transparency and vigilant watchdogs over the years, ASDB might be in a different boat today.
But here we are.
The school’s student body on its Tucson campus numbers a few hundred students.
ASDB as a whole offers services to more than 2,000 children. Still, it’s arguably a drop in the bucket of the more than 1 million students that Arizona public schools serve. (It's far less, even, than the 100,000 students who receive public dollars to attend private schools under the state's school voucher program.)
So why should we care about a few hundred students in Tucson having to move to a new school?
We should care because these students, teachers and staff are friends, family members, coworkers and members of our communities.
We should care because they have been marginalized – both as a group, and individually – by society.
Again, here we are.
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Click here to read the letter and learn more about the policies and goals that Education Forward Arizona is pursuing.
Yeah, nevermind: The Trump administration dropped its appeal of a federal court decision that stopped it from making good on its anti-DEI threats to schools that receive federal funds, the Associated Press reports. Previously, Judge Stephanie Gallagher ruled that the Education Department’s demands to end diversity efforts — in both K-12 schools and universities — violated the First Amendment and federal procedures. Still, the threats from the Trump administration were enough to get the University of Arizona to rename or remove diversity programs a few months after President Donald Trump was inaugurated last year.
Voucher boom: The Arizona Department of Education announced that more than 100,000 students have enrolled in Arizona’s Empower Scholarship Account voucher program, per 12News’ Craig Harris. The state’s public schools chief Tom Horne said the program has grown from 11,000 participants when he took office. Horne downplayed the millions in questionable Department-approved purchases that taxpayers funded and 12News found, including lingerie, diamond rings and Amazon purchases with no information.
Teaching crisis: A staggering 14% of Arizona educators left the profession last year, ABC15’s Elenee Dao and Garrett Archer report in an analysis of the state Department of Education’s first report on teacher retention. The shortage crisis is due in large part to teacher burnout and low salaries, a survey of the more than 8,600 teachers who quit in the 2024-2025 school year suggests.
Risky Education: The Arizona Auditor General flagged Tucson Unified as one of the financially riskiest districts in the state, Valerie Cavazos reports for KOLD. The district is planning to cut $25 million in operating costs by 2030 and has already cut positions and put a freeze on hiring since enrollment and funding are down. The auditor general also identified eight other districts in six counties that are at high risk.
Looking for an option that’s not financially risky at all? Kick us a few bucks and we’ll take care of all your education news needs.
Is it 2020 or 2026?: As fear about ICE activities overwhelms immigrant communities, the Phoenix Union High School District will allow students to pursue remote learning options, Jason Berry of Arizona’s Family reports. In a letter to parents, the district acknowledged that families with mixed immigration status may not want to take their children to school and promised to smoothly transition any students to online education. With 23 schools and more than 28,000 students, it’s the eighth-largest district in the state.
High schools students are making their voices heard as the country deals with ICE sweeps.
Students at several high schools in the Phoenix area walked out of class last Friday to protest on behalf of their friends and family members who could get caught up in those sweeps, 12News’ Jade Cunningham reports.
"She's living in fear of deportation," one student said about a family member. "Since Trump got voted into office, she's been living in fear even more. Now she won't even leave her house.”
"It's not right for them to take people away," another student said. "I'm Puerto Rican, but I have Mexican friends. At the end of the day, they don't care what race you are. If you're Hispanic, you're being deported and guess what? We're here to stay.”