When entering San Xavier Mission School, you’re going to be immediately met with the sound of children learning. It’s a sound that has been gone the past two years after their guardian Friar Ponchie Vasquez sent a letter to parents in August 2022 letting them know the school was closing .
It closed because of declining enrollment and not enough teachers. Now they have a few teachers and staff members that are in charge of 15 students in kindergarten, first, and second grades.
Minh Randolph Solorzano, their principal, is excited to see the new students and also renovations like an updated library and classrooms and a new playground.
“It’s a mixture of a lot of emotions like a roller coaster,” Randolph Solorzano said. “It’s exciting at the same time and also there’s a lot of hard work that goes into it.”
That hard work included getting grants from the Catholic Foundation for the Diocese of Tucson and the Tohono O’odham Nation as well as donations from organizations, churches and parishioners.