Acacia Crossings moved back into Pima Butte’s school boundaries

102

At Wednesday’s Maricopa Unified School District Governing Board meeting, the board approved moving the Acacia Crossings subdivision back into Pima Butte Elementary School’s boundaries (see related story). The move came about after a review of the anticipated growth of Cobblestone Farms as well as current enrollment figures.

The boundary change will put Pima Butte closer to its capacity with approximately 523 students, including 150 students in kindergarten and from Cobblestone Farms.

In a letter to parents and guardians dated June 1, Santa Rosa Elementary School Principal Rick Abel explained the necessity of this move. “We have received Boundary Exception Requests from 150 parents and guardians living outside the new boundaries who would prefer to keep their students at Santa Rosa next year.” He noted that even with the boundary change, “class sizes for the start of the the year at Santa Rosa would be 33 students per class.”

12
Santa Rosa Elementary Principal Rick Abel.

According to Abel, the majority of the boundary exception requests come from students living in the boundaries for the new Tortosa Elementary, which will be housed on the existing Maricopa Elementary School campus until construction of the new building is complete. If all of these exceptions were granted and these students stayed at Santa Rosa, the average class size at Tortosa would be approximately 20 students per class.

“In order to best serve the needs of all students in the district, it will not be possible to accept all of the boundary exception requests at this time,” explained Abel. Parents wishing to withdraw requests for boundary exception should call (520) 568-6152 as soon as possible. If necessary a lottery system will be used to allow as many requests as possible while still maintaining reasonable class sizes at each grade level.

Contact Santa Rosa Elementary School for further information. The office is open from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday.