arizona school district wants funding for facility improvement projects

A school district that has seen its population marginally grow - with income levels significantly on the up side in recent years- is hoping area voters in November will approve a $6.1 million bond for facility upgrade work.

The Tanque Verde Unified School District, with an enrollment of just over 2,100 students, serves the residents of the Tanque Verde Valley community just 14 miles to the northeast of Tucson.

With a population of around 16,200 people, the larger town of Tanque Verde, according to a recent Census Bureau report, has one of the highest median household incomes in all of Arizona.

It also has some of the most successful schools in the state. Earlier this year U.S. News & World Report listed the Tanque Verde High School as one Arizona’s best schools.

Now district officials have succeeded in placing on the fall ballot Proposition 483, which is asking for the approval of what are being called “school improvement bonds.”

Those bonds, if passed, would pay for general facility work at the district’s two elementary schools, one junior high, and one high school.
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Prospects for the bond question at this point are anyone’s guess. In 2018 district voters only narrowly approved a larger $15 million bond devoted to facility security upgrades and the replacement of portable classrooms with buildings.

​By Garry Boulard

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