Key Points:
- PACE High School serves about 70 students. It was projected to reach 500 by next school year, 2026–27.
- The district lost a $125,000 grant this year due to low enrollment.
- The school is overbudgeted by roughly $132,000 this year
- The school has shifted away from its original career pathways mission.
- The district presented five options, from expanding PACE to closing it.
- Board members called for a town hall with families before any decision.
The Casa Grande Union High School District is considering five options for the future of PACE High School, a workforce development campus that has operated below its projected enrollment since opening in 2023. Superintendent Jeff Lavender presented the choices during a board study session on Feb. 9, 2026. The school currently serves about 70 students. Its original projections called for enrollment to reach 500 students by the 2026–27 school year.
No decision was made during the session.
What Is PACE High School?
PACE stands for Pathways Accelerating Career Experiences. The district created it as a face-to-face campus rooted in skills mastery, project-based learning, and social-emotional growth. Its original mission centered on workforce development. Students were expected to spend their freshman and sophomore years building a foundation in core subjects. Then, at the end of their sophomore year, they would choose a career pathway — such as manufacturing, healthcare, or automotive — spend their junior year learning about those careers, and complete a credit-bearing internship during their senior year.
“The original focus of PACE was supposed to be a workforce development school that offered career pathways and credit-bearing internships,” Lavender said.
Community partners like Lucid, Nikola, and Kohler were part of the school’s vision. However, Lavender said the school was never able to fully implement that model because of low enrollment.
How PACE Enrollment Fell Short From the Start
Enrollment began dropping before PACE opened its doors. In January and February of 2023, 135 students had signed up for the school. That number fell during spring orientations.
Lavender said the district discovered that many families did not understand what they had enrolled in. “Families really didn’t know what they were signing up for and didn’t understand that PACE was a separate program,” he said. “It was all abstract. And so parents were signing up their children thinking they were signing up for like a CTE class.”
By May 2023, sign-ups had fallen to 122. When the school opened that July, only 60 students showed up. The district had already hired staff for 125.
In its first year, 70 students attended at some point during the year. Only 44 remained at year’s end. The second year brought 94 students through the door, but just 71 finished. This year, 77 students have attended at some point. Current enrollment sits at about 70.
Grant Funding Lost Due to Missed Targets
A $600,000 New Schools Initiative grant helped fund PACE’s launch. It was distributed in installments: $100,000 for a planning year, $250,000 for the first year, and $125,000 for the second year. A final $125,000 installment was expected this year.
The district did not receive it.
“We were scheduled to receive $125,000 grant this year,” Lavender said. “We did not receive the grant because we did not have the enrollment that the grant called for in the projections.”
Those projections called for 125 students in year one, 250 in year two, 375 in year three, and 500 by year four. Actual attendance never exceeded 94 in any school year.
Construction Plans Scaled Back
The district spent $1.2 million renovating what became the PACE classroom, including adding a kitchen for food service and different learning areas. That work represented Phase 1 of a three-phase construction plan.
Phase 2, estimated at $2 million, would have expanded the building to accommodate more students. Lavender described the plan: “Part of that was to take the southern end of this building, take the roof off and build it up and put a second floor, put some science classrooms in there.”
The district did not move forward with Phase 2 a year ago because enrollment had not increased. A third phase, also estimated at $2 million, was planned for this year. In total, the three phases would have cost $5.2 million.
Phase 1 was funded through the district’s food service funds. Phases 2 and 3 would have drawn from capital funds. As Lavender noted, that $4 million would have competed with the district’s broader $40 million in capital project needs.
PACE Budget: Costs Outpacing Revenue
Veronica Price, the district’s Executive Director of Business Operations, presented a detailed breakdown of the school’s current expenses. Total estimated costs for PACE this year are approximately $756,000. That includes about $427,000 in personnel costs, $111,000 in instructional costs, and $218,000 in operational costs such as food service and transportation.
Revenue generated by the school’s 70 students, based on average daily membership (ADM) funding, is estimated at about $624,000.
“We’re overbudgeted, based on what those 70 students bring in, of about $131,881,” Price said.
She noted that several line items are estimated conservatively. “These numbers could change depending on final expenses,” she said. “We tend to budget high, just so that we have enough funds allocated to cover the costs.”
In the school’s first two years, the gap between costs and revenue was larger. The original budget projected roughly $788,000 in funding based on 125 students. With only 60 attending, that figure dropped by more than half while staffing costs remained unchanged.
“The last two years, we’ve been spending much more in salaries and benefits and costs than what we actually receive in ADM,” Lavender said. To reduce the deficit this year, the district cut PACE’s teaching staff from five to three. One teacher who resigned was not replaced, and an existing director took on additional duties.
Price confirmed the school would need approximately 90 students to break even at its current cost structure.
What PACE Has Become Versus What It Was Meant to Be
Lavender said PACE’s current student population does not match the school’s original mission. Many current students are not seeking career pathways. Instead, they are looking for a place to earn credits after not finding success at the district’s larger campuses.
“Students that are seeking PACE at this time, most of them are not seeking PACE for the pathways to careers because we’re not really doing that right now,” Lavender said. “It’s looking for a place to earn credits where they may have not been successful in their regular campuses.”
He said PACE is not an alternative school but serves students who find large campuses overwhelming. “For some of our students, going to Casa Grande Union or Vista Grande is like somebody going to New York City,” he said. “It’s fast-paced, it’s moving, there’s a lot going on.”
The school also shifted this year to a blended learning model for core subjects. Teachers serve as advisors and lead project-based electives, but main instruction comes through the Subject online curriculum. Monica Diaz, Director of Student Engagement, said this transition has been difficult for freshmen and for math students.
“Not having a math teacher is the main concern,” Diaz said. “That is a continuous one.”
She added that parents who want to keep their students at PACE still have concerns about the online format. They want to know whether the district will continue using it and how it can be improved, or whether other options exist.
Additionally, families who enrolled when career pathways were the school’s focus now have questions about whether that vision is still possible. “There is feedback shared about those who have been here a year or more,” Diaz said. “They have questions about those career pathways, because many chose the school when that was the goal.”
Academic Performance and Graduation Tracking
Diaz also presented data on academic performance. Among the school’s nine seniors, seven have attended PACE for more than a year, and all seven are on track to graduate. Of 23 juniors, 18 have been enrolled for more than a year and 16 of those are on track. Freshmen had the highest percentages of D and F grades compared to other grade levels.
Overall grade distribution for the first semester showed 26% of grades were As, about 30% were Bs, 23% were Cs, 12% were Ds, and 8% were Fs.
Board Member Micah Powell pointed to the on-track graduation figures. “If the numbers were opposite — they weren’t on track — I would see this as an easier decision,” he said. “But because I could see this as a success for these students at PACE, I’m excited to see what we can do to continue to help them.”
Lavender noted that the original freshman and sophomore class started with 60 students. Only about 23 remain as juniors and seniors today. “We have lost more than half of that initial class,” he said.
PACE in the Context of Education Choice
Lavender placed the PACE discussion within a broader history of education. He described three waves: agriculture, when education was built around farm labor; the Industrial Revolution, when schools prepared students for factory work; and today’s technological era.
“We’re preparing students for unknown career fields, because AI is taking over so many jobs,” he said. Other Pinal County districts are pursuing similar goals. Apache Junction USD recently adopted the State 48 Graduate Profile, a statewide workforce-readiness framework.
In this environment, market-driven choice through charters and vouchers has changed how families select schools. According to Lavender, more than 20% of Arizona students currently attend charter schools or use vouchers.
“So as we think of choice education, that’s what PACE came out of — was a choice education,” Lavender said. “And the belief in our community, we wanted a workforce development school that would build to 500 students so we would have all these partners. But the situation, the reality right now, our school is not for 500 students, it’s for 70 students.”
He described the staffing challenge that comes with a small school serving all four grade levels. “You have calculus, algebra 2, geometry, algebra 1 — finding a math teacher that can cover all those classes,” he said. At the district’s larger high schools, multiple teachers each specialize in different subjects.
Five Options on the Table for PACE High School
Lavender presented five possible paths forward:
Option 1 — Expand PACE at its current location. This would mean hiring additional staff, including a dedicated math teacher and potentially a science teacher, returning to five teachers. It would also require more administrative support.
Option 2 — Maintain PACE as it currently operates. The school would continue with three teachers, the online curriculum, and existing programming.
Option 3 — Relocate PACE to one of the district’s two high school campuses. Students would move to either Casa Grande Union or Vista Grande, where they could access subject-area specialists already on staff. They would retain a dedicated space but gain access to some of the electives and resources not available at the current PACE building. Lavender said Union would likely be considered first because it has more available classroom space.
Option 4 — Transition students back to their home schools. Students would return to regular campuses and be placed in standard classes. The district could group PACE students in cohorts to help preserve relationships they have built.
Option 5 — Close PACE entirely. Enrollment numbers are not projected to improve, and the small freshman and senior classes would make it difficult to reopen next year at current levels.
“I don’t want to close PACE because I know it’s an avenue for some of our students,” Lavender said. “But I also have to look at the financial health of our school district and knowing some of the difficult decisions we have coming.”
Concerns About Isolation and Integration
Powell raised concerns about what relocation could look like for PACE students. He asked whether they would be integrated into the larger campus or “tucked away in the corner.”
Lavender said the district would not want to isolate students. “The last thing we want to do is isolate them,” he said. However, he said students who are uncomfortable on large campuses may not be out during passing periods or lunch when all the other students are.
Powell said he would support relocation only if students felt they were part of the broader school community. “I wouldn’t be in support of tucking them away,” he said. “Definitely slowly integrating them” with the existing school community.
Stakeholder Feedback and Possible Town Hall
Diaz reported that 10 students and eight parents submitted feedback through an online survey, written letters, or in-person conversations. Supporters of PACE praised its small, personalized environment. Stakeholder feedback described students who are artistic, creative, or experience anxiety as finding PACE a strong fit after feeling “lost, unseen, and overwhelmed” at larger campuses.
“Many believe that another option for them within the district is important,” Diaz said.
Board member Kelly Herrington said she wanted to hear directly from students and parents before any decision is reached. “I feel like we can’t properly make a decision without listening to them, to hear it firsthand,” she said.
Lavender agreed and said the district could organize a town hall before the board takes action. Lavender said there is interest in bringing other programs to the PACE campus, such as credit recovery, alternative programming for students who are struggling, or services for students with disabilities currently being transported to Gilbert. He said initial conversations have taken place, and programs could operate separately while sharing the space.
“There is no desire to not have anything on this campus,” Lavender said. “We have a beautiful campus here. It’s making the best use of the space, looking at what are our needs right now as a district.”
The study session adjourned without a vote or timeline for a final decision. Residents may have additional opportunities for input, including a potential town hall, before the board acts on any of the five options.
