Canyon View High School (Arizona)


Canyon View High School is a high school in Waddell, Arizona, the fifth public high school operated by the Agua Fria Union High School District.

History

On January 12, 2017, ground was broken for the first new high school in Waddell in a decade. The school, unnamed at groundbreaking, would relieve overcrowding at two other AFUHSD high schools, where class sizes were going over 40 students in some cases. Canyon View cost $78 million to build at a lower cost per square foot than the district's four other schools; $33 million of the total came from the Arizona School Facilities Board, with the remainder of the cost being financed by a voter-approved bond.
DLR Group designed the school complex, which features a variety of informal settings. Teachers do not have fixed classrooms; classes rotate through the school's different spaces, with glass walls separating classrooms. Another feature of the campus is an accelerator, in a separate building, that is open to the community and also houses an auditorium and the school's broadcast studio and maker space.
The school facility is also the subject of an experiment being conducted by DLR on bio-phase change materials to reduce energy consumption and cooling costs. One of the two buildings is outfitted with bio-PCM materials, while the other is not to serve as a control.
The design received the Association for Learning Environments' 2019 James D. MacConnell Award for excellence in programming and design.