History of C. I. Waggoner Elementary School

One of the best ways to “get a feel” for Waggoner’s history is by reading the memories from former students and staff. These people were contacted and interviewed by Ms. Munzinger’s Gifted Resource 2002-2003 students.

“Our family moved to 71^st Street during the summer of 1971. My brother and sister attended Waggoner and Kyrene Junior High. Their eight-grade “group” pictures hang on the walls of the district office. They attended Waggoner when Waggoner was just one building and housed the 4^th and 5^th graders.”

My Mom used to be able to watch the bus leave our house and then travel all the way to the school without any houses blocking her view. Rural was just a dusty canal-lined dirt road in those days. Carver Road wasn’t much bigger than a cow trail.

Waggoner was surrounded by alfalfa and cotton fields and the Basque Sheep herders would pasture their sheep in the fields behind Waggoner. We could watch the sheep while we were on the playground. That was particularly fun in the spring. In the fall there would be baby lambs running around with their mothers.

One year, they emptied a lot of pond water into the irrigation ditches at about the same time our playground was being irrigated. We had large fish (mostly carp) swimming around the playground for the entire day. I brought one home, thinking we could stick it in our cow water tank like some of the neighbors had done in their tanks, but before I could place it in the water tank; my cat fished it out of my pail and ate it.

We used to have to be bussed over to the Kyrene School (where the current district offices are now) on school library day. I don’t recall why, we probably didn’t have a library the first year I was there. But it always seemed like a big adventure to go from the smaller school to the “big kids” school.

These are some of my fond memories of Waggoner school.

Waggoner had very large populations at different times during the 1970s and 1980s. Each time new schools were built students and teachers moved to those new schools. This helped to keep the population of Waggoner smaller.

I didn’t have a choice in staying at Waggoner. Waggoner was becoming a smaller school, since two new schools were being built. The teachers who have been at Waggoner the longest got to decide where they wanted to go first of all. Most of them decided to stay at Waggoner. Therefore, the teachers who had been hired after them moved to the new schools. I would have loved to stay at Waggoner because of the wonderful students, involved parents and awesome staff, but there was no room. Moving did work out well for me, though, as I got to meet and know a whole bunch of new faces in Kyrene!

Mrs. Land was the principal at Ninos. She was and is a very organized, caring, knowledgeable person worked with teachers and students to bring out the best I them. She supported her staff any way she could and ensured that all students were provided with the best environment to learn. She’s a wonderful person who retired from Kyrene. She still volunteers at Ninos today.

The handprints lining the curb were created during the 1995-1996 school year. They were made as a memory of the Waggoner staff and students who went through the experience of major constructions and remodeling. About 500 students imprinted their hands. It was my suggestion as I was the assistant principal. I was directly responsible for managing construction and remodeling with the building company. I thought it would be a wonderful memory of all the students and staff who worked so hard to be safe and to keep a positive learning environment in the midst of major construction.

When I was at WES (Waggoner Elementary School) the principal was Glenn Davis. Mr. Davis (who is now Dr. Davis) left to become Director of Human Resources for Kyrene. My office was in a portable classroom behind the library. The portable housed the WES special education classes as well as those from KMS.

The area around WES was still very rural in the mid 1980s. The only restaurant I can recall was Serrano’s at Rural and Guadalupe! Children in the neighborhood walked their sheep past Waggoner after school!

All of the students from Lone Butte attended WES. These students now attend Lagos and Akimel A-al Middle School. They had to ride many, many miles on the bus to get to WES each day.

I worked at Waggoner when mostly farm fields surrounded it. Sometimes crop-duster planes would spray chemicals on the fields nearby when we were at recess, and we’d all have to run inside. In my first classroom, two of the walls were brick and a third wall was green chalkboard, so it was hard to hang anything on the walls. We had scorpions in the rooms sometimes, and I found a nest of black widows under our couch once.