Mountain Pointe High School

Mountain Pointe High School is a secondary school located in the community of Ahwatukee, which is in the southern part of Phoenix, Arizona. Mountain Pointe is a part of the Tempe Union High School District.On April 16, 2010, the school was awarded the A+ School of Excellence Award, the first school in the district to ever do so.HistoryThe Ahwatukee area of Phoenix experienced explosive growth in the 1990s. The Kyrene School District, the elementary school district in the area, opened a string of new schools here at this time, and the Tempe Union High School District followed suit by opening its last two high schools west of Interstate 10. Mountain Pointe was completed by the fall of 1990, but the Tempe Union district could not open it right away due to funding shortfalls. At last, the new, US$27 million facility opened to students the next year. The 1,100 students in grades 9 and 10 that attended the school at its start were asked to pick a mascot: an eagle, thunder, rough riders or a pride of lions, which won out. Its rival Desert Vista High School was opened to serve the growing southwestern part of Ahwatukee in 1996. Prior to Mountain Pointe's opening, Ahwatukee was part of the service areas of Corona del Sol High School (five miles away from Mountain Pointe and east of the Interstate 10 freeway) and Tempe High School. In the spring of 1994, Mountain Pointe graduated its first graduating class.Mountain Pointe is the largest high school in Ahwatukee with open boundaries. Many people who live in the 85044 zip code attend Mountain Pointe along with commuters from the South Mountain area as well as from Maricopa. The Tempe Union High School District, which had to redraw boundaries significantly in the early 2000s as Corona del Sol grew over its capacity, also includes significant portions of west Chandler in Mountain Pointe's boundaries. While Corona has since shrunk in size, the boundary oddities remain.