Kyrene School District

Kyrene School District
8700 S. Kyrene Road, Tempe AZ 85284
District information
Type	Public
Motto	"Excellence in education for over 125 years"
Superintendent	Dr. Jan Vesely
Students and staff
Students	Approx. 17,500
Other information
Website	http://www.kyrene.org

Kyrene School District is a K-8 school district that serves parts of Tempe, Chandler, Guadalupe, and Phoenix, Arizona, as well as portions of the Gila River Indian Community within Maricopa County. It has nineteen elementary schools and six middle schools. The district office, the Ben Furlong Education Center, is located at the intersection of Warner Rd. and Kyrene Rd. in Tempe. The district is overseen by Superintendent Jan Vesely.

In 1888, the Kyrene School District was founded at the request of nine families who wanted a school district for 17 children. The original boundary area was far smaller than currently; though the north boundary is unchanged, the Kyrene district confirmed its east boundary at Price Road and has since extended west from its 56th Street/Priest Drive boundary and south from Pecos Road to include much of the Gila River Indian Community. The district built a small school that was destroyed in a windstorm; until 1920, the Kyrene School site was at McClintock and Warner roads, two miles due east of the Furlong Center (a 1990 build).

Many teachers who received their educational certificates from Arizona State University, originally called Tempe Normal School, taught in one of the two-schoolroom buildings. Mr. Earl D. Willams graduated from Arizona State University and began teaching Industrial Art at the KYRENE JUNIOR HIGH GRADE K-8 on WARNER and KYRENE Rd. Mr. Williams built the first Industrial Art Shop-Class, the Library and the Administration Building. He also built a replica of the original school house for the Kyrene Bicentennial Parade. Mr. Earl Williams taught Industrial Art for thirty years at Kyrene.

Kyrene approached the early 1970s with 600 students in the entire district, mostly Hispanic students from a small area named "Sende Vista", just south of Guadalupe, an area of South Phoenix called "Highland Terrace", and the Hightown neighborhood of Chandler. Five buses transported the districts to school.

Resources in the '70s were concentrated on building classroom space for the district that would grow fourfold by 1980. C.I. Waggoner elementary was added to, and the district completed Lomas and Norte elementary schools. (C.I. Waggoner Elementary School, est. 1969, is the oldest operating school facility in the district.)

The 1980s brought another wave of new schools, built in mostly the same designs. Nine elementary and middle schools were built in the 1980s, and eleven more followed by the late 1990s. Three more school builds brought the district to 25 elementary schools.

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Wikipedia