COCONINO COUNTY — During late summer 2026, Coconino County Superintendent of Schools Cheryl Mango-Paget visited school facilities throughout the county with a civil engineer, a member of the Arizona School Facilities Oversight Board and liaisons from the Arizona School Facilities Division.
The visits included school sites within:
- Grand Canyon Unified School District
- Page Unified School District
- Flagstaff Unified School District
- Maine Consolidated School District
- Williams Unified School District
- Tuba City Unified School District
The purpose of the visits was to better understand the facility conditions facing rural schools, the effect of those conditions on students and educators and the challenges districts experience when seeking funding and technical support for major repairs.
Across the visits, school leaders discussed aging cooling systems, roof and structural concerns, water quality, drainage, wildfire risk and instructional spaces that have been temporarily or permanently taken out of service.
“School facilities are not separate from student learning,” Superintendent Mango-Paget said. “When classrooms are too hot, water or structural concerns close instructional spaces or students must be relocated from their community school, those conditions affect attendance, learning, staff working conditions and the stability of the entire community.”
The visits also demonstrated the complexity of maintaining rural schools. Small districts may face limited bonding capacity, long travel distances, fewer available contractors, higher construction costs and limited access to engineering and construction-management expertise.
Superintendent Mango-Paget emphasized that the visits were collaborative and that SFD liaisons and SFOB representatives provide important support to districts within the responsibilities and resources assigned to them by the State.
Information gathered through the Coconino County visits will help inform Safe Schools Cannot Wait, a multi-county policy paper now under development. County school superintendents and rural districts throughout Arizona are being invited to contribute facility information, photographs, project timelines and examples of instructional disruption.
The paper is expected to be released in early Spring 2027 and will be used to inform discussions with state leaders about rural school-facility needs and possible legislative solutions.
“Our first responsibility is to build an accurate, well-documented record,” Superintendent Mango-Paget said. “We want policymakers to understand both the conditions rural schools are facing and the practical changes that could help Arizona address problems before they become emergencies.”
To gain a clearer understanding of the ongoing challenges facing our school facilities visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7aB_7BrkXg.
For more information, please contact Cheryl Mango-Paget, Coconino County Superintendent of Schools, at 928-679-8070 or cmango-paget@coconino.az.gov