Montessori School of Flagstaff Is Merging Four Campuses Into One at the Old Marshall School

For the first time in its four decades in Flagstaff, every student at the Montessori School of Flagstaff will be under one roof. The school is moving all four of its campuses into the former Marshall Magnet Elementary building at 850 N. Bonito St., and classes start there on Wednesday, August 12.

The Flagstaff Unified School District board approved the lease at its June 9 meeting, as the Arizona Daily Sun first reported. The school rents part of the site for $10,000 a month, on an initial lease running through June 30, 2027.

Four campuses, one building

Until now the school has been spread across the city, which is a significant thing to unwind:

• Westside and Sunnyside — preschool through kindergarten
• Switzer Mesa — elementary, grades 1–6
• Cedar — middle school

Roughly 260 students, from 18-month-olds through eighth graders, will now share a building. The school has operated in Flagstaff in some form since the 1980s and runs a private early-childhood program alongside a tuition-free charter — an unusual combination, and part of why the split across sites was hard to avoid.

Why this matters pedagogically

Mixed-age contact is not a nice-to-have in Montessori; it is close to the whole point. Three-year age spans exist so younger children learn by watching older ones, and older children consolidate what they know by teaching it. Spread that across four addresses and you are left with whatever survives a car journey.

Director of operations Bethany Boness told the Daily Sun the school had been working on “vertical alignment” between its programs since the pandemic, and that “the Montessori approach is really about community and creating a space that's a microcosm of the wider world.” Board president Kyler Kuehn pointed to concrete gains — reading buddies, and joint Model UN and robotics clubs that currently draw members from both upper elementary and middle school.

There is a practical dividend too. Families with children in more than one program have been running a multi-stop morning; that now collapses to a single drop-off.

The building has its own history

Marshall students moved across the street into a new building at the start of the spring semester, built with 2022 bond funds on the site of the demolished former Flagstaff Middle School. That left the old Marshall building empty — a familiar civic problem, and one the district had not yet solved. Superintendent Michael Penca framed the lease as a way to bring in revenue and keep the building occupied while FUSD finishes evaluating the adjacent Flagstaff High School campus.

Boness noted the site sits within walking distance of public transport, Thorpe Park, and the downtown library — all usable as learning environments, which suits a method built on going out into the world rather than staying at a desk.

Enrollment was a factor, but not the driver

Both leaders acknowledged that enrollment played into the decision. Montessori is one of several Flagstaff schools that has seen numbers fall in recent years, and in Arizona enrollment maps directly onto state funding. But they were clear this is not an attempt to grow significantly, and said enrollment is no more of a concern this year than in others.

That distinction is worth holding onto. Consolidating four leases into one is what a school does to steady itself and improve what it already offers. It is a different story from the closures Arizona Montessori has seen recently — Patagonia Montessori shut in 2026 after 26 years — and the two are easy to conflate.

What families should do

• Update your address book. The school is now at 850 N. Bonito St., Flagstaff, AZ 86001. Any listing still pointing at Westside, Sunnyside, Switzer Mesa, or Cedar is out of date.
• First day is Wednesday, August 12 for the 2026–27 year.
• Go to an open house. Staff planned open houses and orientation days before term specifically to help students navigate the change.

The school leases all four of its current sites rather than owning them, so it has no say in what happens to them next, and told the Daily Sun it was not aware of any plans.