A new school will open in a building that once housed TUSD’s Wakefield Middle School.
The Tucson Unified School District was granted permission from the federal court overseeing its desegregation efforts to reopen the south side campus after it was closed in 2013 as a cost-savings measure.
The school — a middle school, which may be renamed — will operate as a “lab school,” designed to improve racial integration and to prepare traditionally underserved students for advanced learning experiences, including the district’s award-winning University High; Cholla High, which offers International Baccalaureate programming; and Advanced Placement programming at Pueblo and other TUSD high schools.
To prepare students for those advanced learning experiences, the district has been ordered to hire master teachers. Student teachers who lack teaching certificates cannot provide primary instruction without direct supervision from a master teacher at the school, the court ordered.
While concerns have been raised about the district’s ability to invest the appropriate resources into the new campus, the judge ordered that in recruiting those master teachers, TUSD cannot pull those educators from schools that are already racially concentrated or from under-performing schools.
The new school will have no attendance zone. There will be targeted student recruitment efforts and express bus transportation will be offered to students in various areas of the district, with the goal of creating a diverse student body.
But in his order, U.S. District Judge David C. Bury wasn’t just looking to make the lab school racially integrated — he also called for the district to use the new middle school as a tool to diversify three high schools.
Bury ordered TUSD to recruit white students who attend the new school to enroll at Cholla or Pueblo following eighth grade, schools with high populations of Hispanic students. He also ordered the district to “interest” more Hispanic and African American students to attend UHS, so that all three campuses will move closer to racial integration.
The order doesn’t provide a timeline for reopening the campus.
A TUSD proposal filed with the court late last year pegged the cost to reopen the school, which would be designed to serve about 400 students, around $2 million, with funds going toward renovating the library, locker rooms and kitchen. The school, on West 44th Street near South Sixth Avenue, also needs upgrades to technology infrastructure.
Since its closure, Wakefield has been converted into a family resource center, which featured a clothing bank, a food pantry and various workshops for community members.
The Tucson Unified School District continues to struggle with declining student enrollment, but not at the rate it was when Wakefield was closed seven years ago.
TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo previously told the Star he hoped the new campus would alleviate overcrowding in grades sixth through eighth at nearby schools, saying enrollment was “exploding” on the west and southwest sides.
