Sunnyside Centennial

The Sunnyside Unified School District is 100 years old — a milestone worthy of commemoration and celebration! This unprecedented year brought us many unknowns, but it allowed for a different type of creative exploration to honor the centennial. On April 29, we had the distinct honor of kicking off our District Centennial alongside Tucson City Mayor, Regina Romero. On this beautiful spring morning, we celebrated our 100-year history alongside friends and familia of the district. We experienced the sights and sounds of Mariachi Los Diablitos de Sunnyside, Los Diablitos Azules Folklórico de Sunnyside High School, and Mariachi del Desierto de Desert View High School and we launched into the next century with a tree planting ceremony at Sunnyside High School. These were the first of 100 native, drought-tolerant trees we have committed to planting throughout the district thank you to a partnership with Tucson Clean & Beautiful. Mayor Romero broke ground by helping us to plant these trees as this also aligned with the City of Tucson Million Trees by 2030 Initiative. Future generations of students will now have greener, more inviting spaces to make new memories. You can view highlights of the kickoff celebration in the video below.

The Office of Public Information has done extensive outreach to collect photos and yearbooks to display on this commemorative centennial webpage. We hope you enjoy the vault of memories we have collected for you that include yearbooks from both Sunnyside and Desert View High School, as well as a list of former Superintendents and Governing Board Members. If you have photos to share with us, please email them to susdnews@susd12.org and include a description of the photo so that we can share them on our social media.

June 6, 1921 marked the beginning of the Sunnyside Unified School District. SUSD has grown from the modest one-room adobe building to the present-day 21 school campuses. In 1956, SUSD became a unified district (K-12) for the first time with the construction of Sunnyside High School. Today, the Sunnyside Unified School District is the second-largest district in Southern Arizona serving more than 15,000 students and families. Located in a culturally and linguistically rich community and surrounded by two Native Nations—the Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui Tribe—our learning community is flanked by an aerospace and innovation corridor, such that our district is positioned to lead our students into the 21st century through excellence in pedagogy, world-class career and technical education, and a legacy of athletic excellence and passion for the fine arts.