Principal Patricia Hurley smiled as she walked down the Innovation Tech High School hallway.
As she showed a visitor the classrooms, which include drones, flight simulators, a restaurant kitchen and a mock health clinic, she marveled at the 5-year-old school’s journey.
“I always say ‘you should open a school during a pandemic,’” she said. “I am proud of how far we’ve come — from Zoom open houses, 25 students and registration drive-throughs to more than 300 students.”
Hurley is the first principal at Tucson Unified School District’s Innovation Tech and was hired on March 10, 2020, she said. Less than two weeks later, the world stopped because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In May 2025, Hurley marched into Kino North Stadium with her students, celebrating Innovation Tech’s graduation and reflected on the last half-decade. What began as a 25-student school with free Career and Technical Education as its focus during the pandemic, Innovation Tech graduated its first four-year, in-person class with 70 students at the end of May.
In 2020, Innovation Tech opened as a TUSD school focused on Career and Technical Education at 3300 S. Park Ave. The partnership with TUSD and JTED (the Joint Technical Education District — a separate Pima County school district offering classes within the same 100,000 square-foot building), is the first of its kind in Southern Arizona.
Students in Career and Technical Education or, CTE, gravitate toward skills or the arts and may not necessarily be thinking about college. CTE participants have grown 10% from 2020-2024, the Arizona Department of Education reports. Innovation Tech graduated 81.4% of students in 2023 and the Pima County graduation rate that year was 74% according to Education Forward Arizona.
Innovation Tech provides the core classes for students to earn their high school diploma. JTED specializes in elective classes that get students career and college ready in everything from the culinary arts to becoming a medical or veterinary technician or an aviation specialist. Programs culminate in a student’s professional certification, after passing state requirements.
As the Innovation Tech student council met earlier this summer, some students explained prom and clubs are available, but no sports, music or P.E.
Here are three more things to know about the school:
It’s growing.
Innovation Tech had 350 students last school year and has space for about 600, Hurley said. As an open enrollment school, students in any district can apply. “I was set on going to Tucson High. My mom went there,” said Student Council President Aaron Ramos, 17. “And then we visited here and having a small campus like this and just knowing where everything is, is just really helpful. … and meeting the teachers and seeing how welcoming they all were.”
Variety rules.
From 3D animation and game design to robotics and welding, the school has over two dozen programs for students to earn certification. Ramos says he is “not a math guy.” But the senior earned his certification in business and entrepreneurship and aims to attend the University of Arizona and the Eller College of Management. He surprised himself when he was put into a social and mental health class his sophomore year and tried to switch out. “But after the first week, I was seeing how fun everybody is … and how really interesting the field actually is. So I decided to keep going into the second year. And it’s stuff you can apply going forward in life and in school.”
Generating opportunity.
A month into his veterinary internship, senior Carlito Lopez is doing what he loves. With Rocky, the bearded dragon at home and his four pugs, Lopez is also working a 9-to-5 this summer at a Southside vet clinic. “I do think that takes, like, a special type of part, no matter whether it’s pets or humans or whatever, there are people that are not OK with blood and guts and there are people that are. That’s me,” he said. Lopez, also the student council treasurer, says he has learned to monitor pets’ glucose levels or check dogs’ mucus membranes during surgery. For fun, he earned his aviation certificate (think drones) last school year. “I didn’t see myself doing that, but it wasn’t that bad,” he said. “The test was hard, though.”
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