Roosevelt School District No. 66 was established in Phoenix, Arizona in 1912. The first RSD school was located south of the Phoenix City Center on the corner of what is now 7th Street and Southern. What began as a 15-pupil district has grown into a school district serving more than 7,500 students and 1,200 employees in 18 schools, an early childhood education center and a Neighborhood Technology Resource Center. The Roosevelt School District remains the largest employer in south Phoenix. 

The District boundaries are the Salt River to the north, South Mountain to the south, 40th Street to the east and 35th Avenue to the west. If you live within our boundaries, we invite you to enroll your children in one of our schools.

The Roosevelt School District's mission is to build strong foundations through authentic and innovative experiences to ensure success for every student. We envision a community united to create better futures for all through education through a commitment to our core values:

• Collaboration
  We believe in the power of working together.

• Equity
  We personalize education and experiences to meet the needs of all.

• Celebration
  We demonstrate what is important by what we celebrate.

• Inclusion
  We believe in the involvement and empowerment of all.

• Excellence
  We commit to do our best and be our best every day!

• Kindness
  We listen, we care, we serve.

• Integrity
  We believe in doing the right thing.

• Trust
  We build relationships through honesty and respect.

• Rootedness
  We honor and connect to our history and culture.

In September 2020, the Roosevelt School District adopted a strategic plan to engage the community in a partnership with the district to become a high-functioning, efficient, family and student-centered school district.

One of the community's first schools was the Broadway School, a small, one-room brick building, the typical "little red school house." The other was the Heard Ranch School, named after influential resident Dwight B. Heard. Shortly after the District was organized in 1912, the Bartlett-Heard Estate offered two sites for a new consolidated school. The Seventh Street and Southern site was chosen over a site that became Central and Southern for the building, formally named the Consolidated School.

The area's rapid growth made it apparent that the Consolidated School would have to be expanded beyond its three classrooms, which were already taxed to their limits by the school's 150 students. Arrangements soon were made to house students in the Neighborhood House across the street, and construction began to expand the original school and two new school buildings. The naming of the District further indicates how the Roosevelt District was woven into the fabric of the state's history.

There were very few roads in the District's early days. Southern Avenue did not exist, and students reached the school by walking or riding horses or mules along the bank of "San Francisco Ditch" from Central Avenue. The District's original population consisted of homesteaders of Anglo and Hispanic descent. Mexican laborers came later to work the farms. The population increased rapidly, and a twelve-room addition was built in 1921.

The burgeoning population made it necessary to provide more classrooms. This was done when schools were built on the east and west ends of the District, but this accommodation was minimal and short-lived. When the East End School burned down, the West End School was abandoned, and buses were bought to transport all students to Roosevelt School.

The original Roosevelt School was destroyed in a fire on April 5, 1985. The classroom wings were demolished in 1986, and the new administrative center opened in December 1987. The school bell that hung in the tower of the original school building survived the fire and now sits on bricks salvaged from the 1985 fire in the governing board room vestibule of the District Office Building.