At a meeting Dec. 7, the SOCSD Governing Board agreed to offer three leases to three tenants for space at Big Park Community School in the Village of Oak Creek.

All three leases were offered at the same rate per square foot $1.25 — the same as the lease approved in August with the Sedona Public Library’s Village branch.

The first two leases involved splitting a lease between two existing tenants that had formerly been under a single lease.

• SOCSD offered a 12-month lease to Deanna Branaman of Jett Life Ministries dba Red Mountain Music Academy for a 1,408.23-square-foot space in the B building, room B133. While staff has 24/7 access, the room can only be open to the public for 16 hours a week. As such, the lease is pro-rated per day of use, charging $704.12 per month, plus utilities of $75 per month.

According to the acad­emy’s online schedule, it mainly offers private music classes for children in the late afternoons four days a week or mid-morning two days a week.

Branaman taught music in the Verde Valley, including at Big Park Community School, where she started the Garbage Can Band and Machine Shop, a steel drum performance group. She also taught choir, band, percussion and general music.

• Branaman also leads music at the House Church, which is lead by her husband, Jeff Branaman, and lease Big Park’s multi-purpose room for Sunday services, which was the topic of the second lease.

The church rents the school’s 3,685-square-foot multi-purpose room at the same rate of $1.25 per square foot, but only four hours a week, paying $921.25 plus utilities.

The lease was adjusted as Jett Life ministries is now becoming “Journey Church voc” under the covering of Cottonwood Christian Assembly Inc. dba Journey Church Network.

Director of Operations Jennifer Chilton wrote on Jan. 12, “I received the signed Journey Church lease as expected. I received a kind email from Deanna Branaman, formerly the renter of both the audito­rium for House Church and a classroom for her Red Mountain Music Academy, letting me know that she had decided to end her music lesson efforts at Big Park and would not continue her classroom rental.”

• The third lease was one offered to Joanna Horton McPherson, who runs Sedona Village Learning Center LLC, a for-profit preschool for 22 students. The board determined, according to the lease, that offering the lease under the provi­sion “daycare/preschool for children not meeting the age requirements for school attendance including kindergarten,” benefits the district, allowing rental for four months from Feb. 1 to May 31.

The school’s primary space measures approxi­mately 2,180 square feet in the A-West building, rooms A123 and A128. While staff has 24/7 access, the room is open to the public for 40 hours a week. The lease is for $2,725, plus utilities of $150 per month.

McPherson spoke at the meeting in the public comment portion, asking for the lease to be extended beyond May. Under Arizona state law, the board is not allowed to respond to ques­tions at public comment.

McPherson told the board, “I feel you view us as competing, taking students from you; district officials have called me and said that much.”

However, McPherson did not name any specific district official nor offi­cials who allegedly made such calls and provided no evidence, nor statements nor phone records supporting her claim.

McPherson then stated in regards to the other leases, “I’m the only one paying $1.25 per square foot,” which is untrue, based on the publicly available leases posted on the SOCSD website.

While the board cannot legally respond to public c omme n t , SOCS D Superindendent Dennis De a rdon addr e s s e d McPherson, “I would like to make a comment. I have personally talked to you, I have not ever said I feel your program is a threat to us or competition. For the record, I’ve never said that.”

“I have it recorded that you said that,” McPherson claimed. “And Randy [Hawley] has also called me to say that.”

McPherson then asked for a renegotiation and left the podium. In the following discus­sion between the board, Dearden and Chilton, the board stated that all the leases are based on the same rate of $1.25 square foot, with the exception of the Arizona State School for the Deaf and the Blind, which has a grandfathered lease from 2019 for admin­istrative space at $1 per square foot.

“All these leases are being used for different purposes; the school year goes until May,” board member Barbara Trautwein said. “So it makes sense it ends in May when the school year ends.”

“I don’t know where this competition thing comes from, but made the lease on it being a preschool, not for school-age kids so I don’t know how that can be — if the lease is followed, I don’t know how that can be competition for us,” Hawley said.

Despite McPherson’s claim that SOCSD views Sedona Village Learning Center as competition, the board offered the school that new lease for 40 hours and the same $1.25 per square foot rate.

The motions to offer leases to all three tenants each passed unanimously 4-0.

McPherson contacted the Sedona Red Rock News Dec. 10 about the meeting, writing in part, “If you planned on reporting about it, I view this as a good opportunity to inform the public about what has been going on.”

When asked to provide a copy of that recording of Dearden and/or Hawley that McPherson claim she had in her possession, McPherson refused to do so.

As of press time several weeks later, no such recording has been provided, no recording has been posted to the Sedona Village Learning Center website nor Facebook page, nor have excerpts or quotes from recordings been provided, nor posted, nor included in the school’s most recent newsletter, sent to parents Dec. 21, two weeks after the Dec. 7 meeting.

While Sedona Village Learning Center is an LLC with McPherson listed as its agent, the similarly named Sedona Village Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that raises funds for the LLC.

For a few days after the meeting, McPherson had a post on her website explaining why she calls Sedona Village Learning Center a nonprofit when is it legally is not that type of entity, but the post was removed Dec. 12.

Nikki Ramagli, a Sedona Village Foundation board member, sent a letter to NEWS on Dec. 11, inac­curately stating SOCSD “voted in their last board meeting to cut our lease for space at the Big Park school to just 4 months ending May 2022,” however, the vote was to offer a new lease, not make changes to any existing lease.

Ramagli wrote, “The district has become hostile to the preschool,” adding, “When it voted to end the preschool’s lease, it simulta­neously voted to lease other space to a church and library, each for a full year and lower rental cost,” which is inaccurate. The Sedona Public Library’s lease was approved in August and is for the same $1.25 square foot rate for access of 28 hours. The library opened in November.

“Why didn’t it give the preschool the same lease terms?” Ramagli asked. “We have been told by the district officials they don’t want us to operate a school.”

However, when asked, Ramagli did not provide the name or names any specific district official or officials who allegedly made such statements. Ramagli ceased responding to questions after Dec. 12.

“Sedona Village Learning Center returned their signed lease this afternoon,” Chilton wrote Jan. 12.

After a version of this story was published Jan. 7 in The Village View and on Jan. 14 in the NEWS, neither McPherson nor Ramagli provided any addi­tional comments regarding the lease nor the absence of the alleged recording, nor responded to the facts in this story as of Jan. 24.