A lot has changed since Fountain Hills Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Cain Jagodzinski said the District would take additional time to consider consolidating school buildings, as reported by The Times on Sept. 14. Jagodzinski continued to brainstorm potential solutions with staff and parents and, since that time, a bond and capital override failed to pass this November.

The Board will vote on a slightly different consolidation plan tonight, Wednesday, Dec. 14. Since the school district’s funding is directly tied to student population, Jagodzinski has looked at ways to raise enrollment in the wake of the bond and override failure. He said that enrollment is up 15 students from last December, but his goal is to raise enrollment by 600 students to approximately 1,800.

“We’ve tried everything in the past. We had some of the best academic scores in the state, but enrollment didn’t go up,” Jagodzinski said. “We won nine state titles in four years athletically…but enrollment did not go up. We’ve tried different models, and enrollment did not go up. I’ve looked at it so many different ways, and all I come back to is, we have to get the 800 kids under the age of four in this town into our schools, and then we have to keep them there.”

Jagodzinski believes that the new consolidation plan will be beneficial to young families and the district as a whole. Back in June, the Facility Use Advisory Committee recommended consolidating pre-K through fifth grade at the current middle school campus and moving grades 6-8 to its own space on the high school campus. The plan remains the same from K-8, but it has changed so that pre-k students remain at the McDowell Mountain campus.

Jagodzinski sees the potential for every grade level to benefit from this transition. Pre-K students would have more space to themselves, and there would be a coherent flow from kindergarten to fifth grade. K-5 would also be in the newest school building in the district, outfitted with natural lighting and newer technology than other buildings.

Jagodzinski was a seventh grade science and social studies teacher back when grades 6-8 were on the high school campus, prior to 2002. He knows the system can work well, and there are still gates on campus that were used to separate high school and middle school students back in the day.

Grades 6-8 would have increased access to high-level academic courses and athletic coaches on a shared campus. They would also have assemblies more fit for their age, rather than having eighth graders participating in elementary level activities.

Jagodzinski said the schools would likely share resources, like teachers and aides, and two unfortunate consequences to consolidation are the possibilities of reducing staff and increasing classroom size. He did add that Fountain Hills school class sizes were currently much lower than surrounding districts.

Jagodzinski said the primary reasons for consolidation are alignment and increasing enrollment, but it will also cut costs. By not moving pre-K classrooms, FHUSD does not need to renovate bathrooms and playgrounds at Fountain Hills Middle School. Operating costs at McDowell Mountain will also drop considerably once grades K-3 move to Fountain Hills Middle School.

Jagodzinski has not had an in-house Director of Finance since he was hired as superintendent this past summer and has instead relied on the third-party True Professionals Consulting. Jagodzinski is making a recommendation to hire a new director of finance tonight, and True Professionals will temporarily stay on in an advisory role.

Jagodzinski said he will be stricter on budget approvals moving forward, especially with athletics. According to Jagodzinski, the high school field will be condemned and deemed unsafe for use following the 2022-23 soccer seasons, and it will cost approximately $600,000 to replace. The inspection into the condition of the field was reportedly done before Jagodzinski’s hiring this past summer.

The district currently does not have the money necessary for a new field, one of the projects that would have been covered with the passage of November’s ballot measures. It is possible that teams could play on the middle school grass field, but it is also possible that every soccer and football game has to be played on the road until the high school gets a new field.

Jagodzinski made assurances that the high school athletic programs have funding for supplies, transportation and coaching salaries for this year and next year. Jagodzinski is a former Falcon coach, but his top two priorities on campus are academics and school safety. He’s asked coaches to take on the task of fundraising their own programs’ futures, and he’s asked Athletic Director Evelyn Wynn to think outside of the box.

“You can only ask the community so much for fundraising, that’s another issue,” Jagodzinski said. “If you’re a business owner, and football comes in, girls basketball comes in, tennis comes in, golf comes in, at some point, you have to probably start saying no. I mean, you can’t do everything. I’ve challenged Evelyn to start thinking about a comprehensive approach.”

All FHUSD School Board meetings are held at the District Learning Center and are recorded on YouTube. Tonight’s business meeting will begin at 6 p.m.