The Marana School District Governing Board is to decide Thursday whether to close Thornydale Elementary, which has suffered from declining enrollment.
The closure, should the Governing Board approve it, would not occur until June 2019 and students would be reassigned to either Quail Run Elementary School or Butterfield Elementary School.
The board will take comments from the public at the start of its meeting, at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 12, at Marana Middle School, 11285 W. Grier Road, in the cafeteria.
Thornydale Elementary, built in 1974, is designed to serve as many as 600 students, according to the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ School Facilities Board. But over the last eight years, the population has dwindled to about 300, the Marana school district said.
The infusion of students would boost enrollment at Butterfield and Quail Run, both of which were operating under 70 percent capacity in 2017, according to a School Facilities Board report.
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More than 100 community members turned out for a public hearing on the issue at Thornydale on March 27 to urge Governing Board members to save Thornydale.
Should the district move forward with the closure, transportation for Thornydale students to Quail Run and Butterfield would be provided — both are within a 2-mile radius. Students could also enroll in other Marana schools.
The Marana district anticipates that all Thornydale teachers, staff, and administrators will continue to have a position due to attrition at other school sites as well as the opening of a new K-8 school in Dove Mountain in the fall of 2019.
The planned Dove Mountain school is in a different region of the district that is growing, and growth is expected to continue in the future, whereas there is no plan for future home growth in the Thornydale area, said Marana District spokeswoman Tamara Crawley.