Amphitheater Public Schools

Three primary factors are contributing to enrollment decline:

• Declining birth rates: Arizona’s birth rate dropped by 33% from 2007 to 2021.
• Expansion of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs). As of May 12, 2025, 88,862 students were receiving vouchers to pay for private school tuition, curricula, educational supplies and tutoring. Students can only get voucher funding if they do not attend a public school. In the Amphitheater boundaries, 1,367 students were receiving vouchers, totaling $13.5 million in funding as of fourth quarter 2024. Students who were already enrolled in private education were receiving $11.8 million of that total. This means that students in the Amphitheater boundary who had been in public school and are now in private school or microschools were receiving $1.7 million per year that at one time went to public education.
• Surge of charter and private schools in the Amphitheater boundary. The Amphitheater boundary area has 21 charter and private schools. To put that into perspective, Catalina Foothills has two, Flowing Wells has four, Marana has three and Sunnyside has five.

Since 2005, Amphitheater has experienced a steady decline in enrollment—from 15,967 students in 2005 to 10,661 in 2025, a drop of over 5,300 students, or 33%. Find a chart with data for each year since 2005 here.

The national birth rate has been in steady decline since 2005. Find a chart that shows birth rate data since 1970 here. We are working on collecting birth rate data specifically for the Amphitheater District. We will update this question with that information when we receive it.

The declines in enrollment have resulted in campuses that are dramatically under-enrolled. This table shows the enrollment and capacity of each of our sites, along with the annual operational and per-student operational costs.