Amphi High School-Yesterday and Today

 

Amphi High School-Yesterday and Today

            Amphitheater High School opened in 1939. As the second high school established in Tucson, it has a long history and has produced many graduates well-known in the local community as well as many that have gone on to national prominence. 

 

            For much of the twentieth century, the Amphitheater area was home to middle class families, and the prosperous Catalina Foothills area also fed into Amphitheater High School.  The opening of Catalina Foothills High School in 1992 led to many college-bound, middle class students leaving Amphitheater High School.  As Tucson has grown rapidly in the past twenty-five years, many middle class families have moved out of the city limits to unincorporated suburbs or to higher-income areas like Oro Valley.  Today the Amphitheater neighborhood is a low-income, high-mobility area.  Amphitheater High School is surrounded by mobile home parks, apartment buildings, and small bungalows.  Once-thriving stores and service businesses have been replaced by convenience and liquor stores, high-interest lenders, and other small businesses mixed in with vacant store fronts.  A former mom-and-pop doughnut shop near Amphi is now a drive-through Checkmate offering payday loans.

 

            Within this transformed neighborhood, Amphitheater High School continues to be a haven for students in the community.  The school grounds include large grassy sports fields, a performing arts center, a thriving library, and a sparkling pool.  School buildings are organized around a courtyard where students mingle on outdoor tables and benches.  In the past eight years, Amphitheater High School has transformed and created a strong career and college-ready focus for the students in the community. 

            The Amphitheater High School community is rich in cultural diversity.  This is a strength that allows students to be exposed to other life experiences, perspectives, ideas, and learning methods.  With its demographic profile and large immigrant population, Amphitheater High School is one of the most diverse high schools in Tucson, with the feel of a global neighborhood school.

Race/Ethnic Distribution - 2019-2020
Asian	Black	Hispanic	Native Am.	White	Multi-racial
4.7%	10.9%	63.3%	3.4%	16.1%	1.6%

 

 

 

 

            Despite the recent successes in campus environment and programmatic changes, Amphitheater High School is a place of great need.  Even before the covid-19 shutdown, the average mobility rate of families in the Amphitheater High School boundaries for the past 5 years is 39%.  This means more than a third of enrolled students have transferred in or out campus in a given school year.  The pandemic has only aggravated this instability – Projected enrollment for 2020-2021 was 1,350 students – when in-person classes resumed in the last week of March, only 1,000 students returned.  While some of the shortfall is students who are streaming their classes at home or have shifted to the online “Amphi Academy”, others are simply no longer in school – perhaps permanently.  This constant turnstile of students in and out of classes creates a unique challenge for academic success for students on the move and a disruption to the learning process for students that remain. 

 

            The Amphi area has become a center of refugee resettlement – the student body draws from 26 or more different home languages at a given time.  This creates barriers to communication between school, student, and family.

 

            Families in our community continue to struggle financially.  Over the past 5 years, 81% of students qualify for the federal Free and Reduced Lunch program.  Living at such low-income levels lead families to focus on daily necessary provisions rather than academics.  Even transportation to school, and to school-related events, is a challenge for many. 

 

            Disruptions include losing utility service at home, parents having to work extra jobs, buying inexpensive, unhealthy food, and often times not being able to subscribe to internet services that have proven to be a necessity in education in the past year.

 

            The cumulative effect of these challenges is reflected in the fact that Amphitheater continues to have lower performance on standardized assessments than Arizona and national norms. 

 

However the school has worked hard and achieved some notable progress in the last 5 years. AHS has achieved:

 

•       a three-year increase in AzMERIT algebra I and algebra II proficiency scores.

•       a three-year increase in the average composite ACT scores for seniors. 

•       an increase in the number of students enrolling in the REACH Gifted and Talented Program

•       a 33% increase in the number of students enrolling in at least one College Board Advanced Placement course (SY18-19 to SY19-20).