Closed San Xavier Mission School helps to place students elsewhere

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson is helping families on the Tohono O’odham Nation find new schools for children to attend, after San Xavier Mission School suddenly closed down Friday.

The historic school closed “due to a significant decrease in enrollment as well as lack of critical staffing to include a kindergarten teacher and principal,” Sheri Dahl, schools superintendent for the diocese, said in a Monday announcement.

On Tuesday, as school employees cleaned out the campus, Dahl said the diocese was working to connect families with the other educational options.

“We’re all sad,” Dahl said. “But at the end of the day, the children deserve a quality education that, right now, the school cannot provide, and so we have to do what’s best for them. That’s our bottom line.”

San Xavier Mission School, next door to San Xavier Mission del Bac, has long served K-8 students on the Tohono O’odham Nation. It started its year on Aug. 1 with a budget that could accommodate at least 45 students. That was the total enrollment number on the first day of classes.

But since the school wasn’t able to offer kindergarten due to the lack of a teacher, that enrollment number quickly dropped to 40 as parents pulled their kids out of the school to find the grade levels their families needed.

“I mean, 45 (students) was already a really stretched budget to run a school. It would’ve been doable, but to drop to 40 within a week … that was the tipping point,” Dahl said.

Student families and about 10 employees of the school were notified soon after the decision was made Aug. 12 to suspend the school’s operations, Dahl said. There are several vacancies in other diocese schools that the workers have been encouraged to apply for, she added.

San Xavier Mission School — Undated photos of sisters with their students at San Xavier del Bac Mission School.
Courtesy of Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

On Monday and Tuesday, diocese school leaders also coordinated with parents and other diocese schools to find placements for the students, Dahl said. The school has been helping families with two main alternatives, she said: finding another Catholic school they can transfer to, or directing them to public schools in the area.

“Out of the families who have begun transitioning to other schools and have reached out to us for assistance, about 80% are selecting another Catholic school,” she said, not naming specific schools.

In a letter sent out to families, Father Ponchie Vasquez of San Xavier Mission said Santa Cruz Catholic School, at 29 W. 22nd St., is the nearest diocese school to the mission, which is on the southwest side of the Tucson area.

He said leadership will work to ensure there are tuition scholarships available to families who opt to stay in the Catholic school system.

Dahl said the diocese doesn’t have its own central transportation system for students who opted to stay in a Catholic school, so it would be up to parents and guardians to coordinate their kids’ transportation to and from school. Public school districts might offer their own transportation routes in the area, she noted.

Short notice, big adjustments

Patty Brueggeman, a special education teacher who has worked part time with San Xavier Mission School through a partnership with Sunnyside Unified School District, said she worries about how families will adjust within such a short time frame.

She criticized the suddenness of the closure, which she said left community members scrambling to find new schools and new jobs.

Although families had been responsible for their own kids’ transportation to San Xavier Mission School, she pointed out that many students had simply walked to campus because it was in their neighborhood.

The Sunnyside Unified School District, which is the primary school district for the area, offers transportation to some of their schools, but Brueggeman said the students will have to adjust to much more as they transfer to a new campus.

For example, she said, the young Indigenous children will no longer be immersed in a school with their own native language and culture.

The mission school, which opened in 1864 as the first Catholic school in Arizona, had a philosophy of connecting Native American students to their heritage, languages and traditions, its website says.

“I’m sure the parents like for them to be where they hear their own language, they see their own people,” Brueggeman said. “I will say that public schools try their best. Most of them have a Native American specialist who works with the kids because they do struggle in public schools off the reservation.”

Austin Nunez, chairman of the San Xavier District of the Tohono O’odham Nation, said the school will be missed, but “not all is lost.”

He said that while the Sunnyside district doesn’t offer courses specific to the Tohono O’odham language or culture, there are after-school extracurricular opportunities available to students who wish to learn more.

“We have a program called the People’s Wellness House that works with some of the students, and they have after-school programs at Santa Clara Elementary School” in the Sunnyside district, he said, adding that students who sign up have the opportunity to delve into Native American culture and language.

Still, Nunez hopes things can go back to normal in time for next year.

“Their presence will certainly be missed here, and I hope that by next school year, the situation will be improved so that the school can reopen,” he said.

But Dahl said it’s still not clear whether San Xavier Mission School will reopen its doors next year.

“We want to be very deliberate and, instead of focusing on a particular timeline, we want to focus on doing it correctly,” Dahl said, adding that she hopes to have a better idea of the school’s future by spring.