Cortina Elementary

Cortina Elementary is a primary school of mid-sized scale in QUEEN CREEK, Arizona, one of the schools within Higley Unified School District (4248), serveing 629 students in grades pre-K through 8. By comparison, Arizona's public schools average about 451 students each, so Cortina Elementary sits 39% above that benchmark.

Higley Unified School District (4248) comprises 16 schools with combined enrollment of 12,387 students; Cortina Elementary is among them.

On the student-mix side, Cortina Elementary logs that the largest single group is White, at 70% of enrollment; the rest comes out to 19% Hispanic, 5% multiracial, 3% Black, 2% Asian. By comparison, Maricopa County as a whole is about 59% White, so the school skews meaningfully more White than its surroundings.

On the income-and-resources front, On paper, Cortina Elementary has 41 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 15.5:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 17.0:1 average.

Across the wider county, ACS estimates for Maricopa County put median household income runs about $89,300, roughly 37% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and the poverty rate sits near 8%. In all, Maricopa County runs 1352 public schools (combined enrollment of about 725,139 students), of which Cortina Elementary is one.

Benjamin Franklin High School is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.6 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Cortina Elementary.

Geographically, the school is in a suburban area.

Over the past 7-year window. Over the past 7-year window, the student count ticked down 27%: 866 students in 2018 compared to 629 in 2025. The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 20.9:1 in 2018 to 15.5:1 today.

Within the allk12 community for this school, posts here usually surface around enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. The community welcomes input from current and former families.