There are a lot — a lot — of empty school buildings and unused plots of land owned by school districts.
How many, exactly? Nobody really knows.
But it’s clear that as public school enrollment continues to decline, the number of vacant buildings is likely to increase.
By one count, from the Common Sense Institute of Arizona, the state’s public school districts “have 78 million square feet of ‘excess’ space” as of last year in a “sprawling network of thousands of school buildings, vehicles, and people.”
To be clear, the self-proclaimed non-partisan group does not define “excess space.”
Are we talking lots? Buildings? Parcels leased to other institutions and not used by the district itself, or those sitting completely idle and collecting cobwebs and vermin? (The think tank, which has satellites in other states, is a supporter of school privatization.)
Otherwise, there is little data out there pinpointing how many buildings and how much acreage owned by school districts sit idle.
But the general consensus is, it's a lot.
Now, some of those facilities do get used — sometimes by other public schools, sometimes by private or charter schools. For example:
Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind are moving into Amphitheater School District’s soon-to-be-shuttered Copper Creek Elementary. ASDB will pay Amphitheater a bit more than $1.27 million for the first year to use the 106,002 square feet of Copper Creek’s building space, according to the lease agreement.
In 2024, Tucson Unified School District renewed a lease for portions of its Lynn-Urquides Elementary School’s campus to Guadalupana Lab School, a faith-based early childhood education center, designed for children from low-income families. The renewed agreement — starting at $36,000 a year — had TUSD “breaking even” for that portion of the campus, one school official told the TUSD Governing Board.
TUSD has several other lease agreements, including renting the closed Richey Elementary to house a Pascua Yaqui Tribe community center and the Tucson Family Food Project. And the district rents its shuttered Rogers Elementary to Sky Island High School — a non-profit public charter school.
In an effort to alleviate a multimillion-dollar deficit, last May the Isaac Elementary School District Governing Board approved the lease of the former Lela Alston Elementary School/Estrella Brillantes Center for Learning to STEER, an education company geared towards helping students with special needs, KTAR News reported.
The lease includes an initial annual rent of $123,000. Additionally, STEER is to provide 720 student placement days per year for Isaac student at no cost, valued at $144,000 annually.
And all that empty space has prompted Republican Rep. Matt Gress, chair of the House Education Committee, to start thinking about what schools should, and shouldn't, be doing with that space.
Boundaries-shmoundaries?
Speaking of Isaac School District … a deal between that district and Tolleson Union High School District has been under scrutiny for about a year.
Republican Rep. Matt Gress, chairman of the House Education Committee, sent a letter about the proposed Isaac/Tolleson deal to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes last February, arguing the contract presents conflicts of interest, possible violation of school district governance laws and passes financial burdens on to taxpayers.
Gress also noted that a school district — a political subdivision — is defined geographically, and argued that the exchange of property, whether via sale or lease, could blur not only district boundary lines, but the lines determining who governs what.
So he sponsored House Bill 2384 to prohibit a school district from purchasing or leasing school sites located outside the geographic boundaries of the district.
A lessor of a district property would be prohibited from turning around and leasing that property to another school district (no subletting). Lease terms would be limited to 20 years, with voter approval required for proposed lease agreements lasting 10 years or more.
Finally, districts would be required to submit reports on owned and leased real estate holdings, (location, use, lease terms and revenues or payments), and the Arizona Department of Administration’s Division of School Facilities would have to compile those and submit a statewide report to the governor and the Legislature.
Presumably, that report would be available to the public, bringing a little joy into the lives of education journalists and other transparency enthusiasts.
Schools are kinda like houses, right?
ICYMI, there is a housing crisis in Arizona.
Federal census data show that 2.98 million housing units in Arizona were occupied in 2024, out of a total of 3.3 million units, as of 2024. There were but 70,784 housing units available for rent in Arizona that year.
In 2025, there were significant declines in new builds of both single and multifamily units, calculations based on Census Bureau numbers and a survey of building permits.
What does that have to do with schools?
Well, Gress' HB2383 would limit governing boards to approve the lease of school property for residential use.
Schools could still provide housing for teachers, and they could sell school property for a housing development project.
This is another bill inspired by the persistent Tolleson Union High School District dumpster fire (not a literal dumpster fire, to be clear — an actual dumpster fire would be the least of the district’s worries).
In May, Tolleson’s governing board approved a plan that would lease 12 acres of vacant land owned by the district to a developer, in order for that developer to build affordable housing. The lease would be for 99 years.
At the time, Tolleson superintendent Jeremy Calles said, “We can’t let ourselves be fully reliant on state and federal funding. We have to find other ways to support ourselves.”
Affordable housing?
Great!
A new way for school districts to gain funds?
Super!
For-profit companies getting out of paying a significant amount of taxes?
Ummmm … hooray?
The issue that Gress is trying to solve, he said in the committee meeting last week, is that districts leasing — rather than selling — property for housing can result in tax shelters for folks in the business of housing, because school property isn’t taxed.
“If you want housing to be developed on your vacant land, sell it,” Gress said.
Getting their fix(es)
There are some real junkboxes owned by school districts, statewide — some still in use. Barely.
Gov. Katie Hobbs addressed school building renovations in her 2027 budget proposal, including a funding increase that would boost the efforts of the state’s Building Renewal Grant program.
At last count, the program has 720 projects in limbo, with a $216 million gap as of December 2025.
The grants can only be applied to urgent, non-routine efforts to keep a public school building functional — necessities like HVAC and structural repairs/updates.
Building Renewal Grants cannot be used for aesthetic purposes, new construction, day-to-day maintenance or leased property.
There could be an additional restriction.
Gress' HB2482 would establish a $1 million cap on construction services job orders for projects supported by a Building Renewal Grant.
That would limit the size of construction projects that could be paid for from the Building Renewal Grant funds. And if the source of Hobbs’s Building Renewal Grant boost — the renewal of Prop 123 — falls through, that kind of limitation on spending might be necessary.
Leveling the playing field: Voters might be asked in November to put guardrails on the state’s school voucher program, the Republic’s Helen Rummel reports. The Arizona Education Association and Save Our Schools Arizona started the process for a ballot measure that would put income caps on who could use vouchers and what parents could buy with voucher money. The measure also would require any school that receives voucher money to follow the same rules that public schools do, like doing background checks for all employees.
Bad company: Hundreds of people signed a petition asking Phoenix Union High School District Governing Boardmember Jeremiah Cota to resign, per the Republic’s Erick Trevino. Cota attended a Christmas party hosted by people with ties to neo-Nazis and White supremacists and now the governing board is considering whether to censure Cota.
“If he wants to represent Ward 1, he's going to have to really understand the priorities of that ward. I don't think White supremacy fits that," said Signa Oliver, a Phoenix Union governing board member.
No more COVID money: Twice as many school districts in Arizona are considered financially “high-risk” as last year, KTAR’s Shira Tanzer reports. The Arizona Auditor General analyzed the finances of 207 districts and put nine of them in the highest-risk category. Another nine are getting close. Districts are dealing with declining enrollment and shrinking budgets, on top of the federal COVID money drying up last year. Scottsdale Unified was one of those “high-risk” districts, with an expected $8 million budget shortfall. The governing board is considering cuts to school counselors and changing the boundaries for one school, AZFamily’s Kylee Cruz reports. At Chandler Unified, officials expected to be put in the “high-risk” category after enrollment dropped 9% over the past four years, Ken Sain reports for SanTan Sun News. But they said they “did a really good job managing our funds” after the pandemic and “now things are starting to stabilize.” Still, the district is planning a staff reduction plan that will cut five teaching positions.
The last thing we want to do is enact a staff reduction plan. Keep us in the black by upgrading to a paid subscription.
Say a prayer: The Trump administration is trying to bring prayer back to public schools, per States Newsroom. The U.S. Department of Education issued guidance for local and state agencies saying students and teachers have “a right to pray in school as an expression of individual faith, as long as they’re not doing so on behalf of the school.” Trump officials point to recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including a famous incident from 2022 when a high school football coach prayed at the 50-yard line after games.
Lifelong learners: This one doesn’t quite fit with “education” as we usually think about it, but it’s a nice story nonetheless. Asylum seekers stuck on the Mexico side of the Arizona border are learning how to make ukuleles at a workshop run by an engineer and humanitarian volunteer from New Hampshire, the Nogales International’s Daisy Zavala Magaña reports.
“It's a support system for those of us who are here, making the time we spend waiting here easier,” Rosario, a migrant from Michoacan, Mexico who coordinates the workshop, said. “Besides keeping us busy, we're learning a trade that will be useful to us later in life.”
Curt is a spelling bee fanatic (and winner of his eighth-grade bee), so it’s with great relish that we bring you some of the winners from across Arizona.
Gavin Lauritzen took first place in the Graham County Spelling Bee by spelling “eligibility” and “lactose.”
He takes spelling bees seriously and showed up wearing a suit and tie.
Smriti Parajuli nailed “concordance” to win in Yuma County after correctly spelling “grandiloquent,” “serendipitous,” “tenurial” and “scribblative.”
“This is her last year to participate,” her mother, Binita Parajuli, said. “She's in eighth grade, so she was really serious. She was reading all the time, doing her homework, everything… and then do the spelling bee after she got into the school, you know, like a finalist. And then she was working really hard.”
In Scottsdale, they do it a little differently. They hold a spelling bee in English and another one in Spanish.
Camden Hernandez, who loves to read and says “Jurassic Park” is his favorite book, won the English version with “minestra,” while Adrian Cortes Ramon won the Spanish version.
“I was excited, and I was scared,” Adrian said. “I thought, ‘I’m not going to win.’”
They, along with the winners from other Arizona counties and school districts, are now heading to the Arizona Spelling Bee in March. With any luck, they might even go to the national bee in Washington, D.C. in May.