Key Points: 

• Phoenix Union High School District plans staff reduction given a 10% dip in enrollment since 2022 

• Tucson Unified School District and Kyrene School District also face funding and enrollment obstacles

• State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne says public schools need to improve their programs to compete with school choice

With the future of several K-12 Arizona public schools uncertain, school districts such as Phoenix Union are struggling to stay afloat with lower enrollment and funding. 

In a letter released to Phoenix Union High School District staff and faculty on Oct. 24, Thea Andrade, the Phoenix Union superintendent, said the district is experiencing a decline in student enrollment so significant that it will directly affect funding and the ability to sustain current operations. 

Phoenix Union High School District primarily serves Phoenix with 23 schools and 28,000 students, covering over 220 square miles, according to its website. This year alone, the district has lost 1,800 students, and since 2022, the district has dropped by 10%, according to the letter. 

The district faces anticipated $35 million in funding reductions by the 2027–28 school year and a 6% workforce reduction due to the decline.

According to Esteban Flemons, president of Phoenix Union’s Classroom Teachers Association, the district is leaning toward administrative staffing cuts to offset the loss. Flemons said the district is also considering combining roles to save money on salaries. 

“Unfortunately, we’re getting close to that point where we may have to start looking at staff that have to be reduced,” Flemons said. 

Phoenix Union is one district among many that has made their issues with attendance and funding transparent. The Kyrene School district is currently working on a plan to repurpose or close eight schools, according to a district spokesperson. By the end of 2025, at least 20 public schools in Arizona have closed or will close, according to reporting from Save Our Schools Arizona.

Kyrene School District has created a Long Range Planning Committee to address the issue. 

“Today, Kyrene serves approximately 12,000 students in schools built for 20,000, and resources are stretched across too many campuses, making it difficult to provide the level of support every school community deserves,” Kyrene states on its website. 

According to a spokesperson from Kyrene, while community support has helped their perseverance, their ability to financially sustain themselves is becoming increasingly difficult. 

Gabriel Trujillo, superintendent of the Tucson Unified School District, said the district is also facing funding challenges, as it has lost 900 students over the past 12 months. 

“We are not unique. We are sort of part of the bigger system of public education across the country,” Flemons said. “Schools across the nation are seeing this decrease in enrollment as people don’t have kids as early.” 

Both Trujillo and Andrade cited lower birth rates — which dropped 36% in Arizona between 2007 and 2022 — and Empowerment Scholarship Accounts as two possible factors in the sudden dip in student enrollment. 

The ESA program provides vouchers for every participating child in Arizona, to help subsidize the cost of private schools. With ESA now accessible to every student, families are incentivized to leave public schools, which in turn provides less funding for districts, both educators said. 

“(This Legislature) has always tried to find a way to pass that burden on to the private sector through trying to increase the presence of private schools and private for-profit charter operators,” Trujillo said. “Now with empowerment scholarship accounts, they found a way to effectively try to pay off parents to walk away from the traditional public school, and they’ve been pretty successful.”

As of this week the ESA program officially spent over $1 billion on vouchers in 2025, according to a press release from Save Our Schools Arizona. Almost 97,000 students in Arizona use the vouchers, according to the Arizona Department of Education.

Flemons and a Kyrene spokesperson said that public schools are now looking to the state to increase funding and support public education. 

Tom Horne, superintendent of public instruction for Arizona, said that school closures are relatively normal, as people move in and out of certain areas. That said, he suggested that districts work to improve their curricula and education programs if they want to compete with private schools. 

“Almost all parents want their kids to go to the neighborhood school. If they make the decision to take the student out of the neighborhood school and send them to another school, it’s because they’re not satisfied with the academic education their child is getting,” Horne said. “The way to prevent that is to do a better job of academics.”

Trujillo said that when more students leave a district, schools receive less per-pupil funding. Arizona ranks last in the U.S. in per-pupil funding. 

“If we were funded more correctly, we would have an opportunity to not be in these positions where we were having to cut staff at such a dramatic rate,” Trujillo said. 

Horne said that while he agrees the Legislature should allot more funding per student, it should not significantly impact schools, because when a student leaves, the school no longer has to fund them.

Even when fewer students are in a school, they still have to pay the same for staffing and utilities, leaving them with more costs than the funding allows, Trujillo said. He also said that, to keep up with competing schools for certain staff members, they have to offer competitive wages — which is difficult when there are fewer students at their school. 

“What wins the battle is compensation,” Trujillo said. “When you’re losing enrollment like that, it is really hard to keep pace.”

Trujillo said Tucson Unified is working on creative ways to attract more students, such as promoting their online academy, Tucson Unified Virtual Academy. 

“It’s a look at what we probably should be doing more of in the immediate future if we want to prevent families from taking Empowerment Scholarship Accounts or going to other school districts,” Trujillo said. 

Flemons said Phoenix Union’s main solution is to encourage their staff to leave or retire, to minimize wage costs while avoiding layoffs. Despite their current financial state, in the letter Andrade said she remains positive about the future of the district. 

“Our board has done everything we can to embrace students and embrace families and find opportunities to keep students in our space,” Flemons said.