No parent in the Sedona-Oak Creek School District is still under the illusion that the current Governing Board won’t soon vote to close Big Park Community School in the Village of Oak Creek.
School closures for budgetary reasons usually take several years to implement. Yet the breakneck speed with which the proposed closure has come is not just undemocratic but reckless. “Restructuring” was not even on the table in September, yet at the October invitation-only “forums” school district staff and board members pushed school closures as the only feasible way to save the district money. This was not a grassroots movement, but an Astroturf endeavor by Superintendent David Lykins and his allies on the school board.
When the district formed, Village of Oak Creek voters were assured that they would have their own school should they approve it. Now that covenant will be broken and VOC parents and taxpayers have every right to be up in arms.
The one thing that Lykins has neglected to mention is that if BPCS closes, he will be running two-thirds of his former district.
Thus, logic dictates his salary should be reduced by one-third, from $120,000 to $80,000 per year. *
Also in question would be who will be principal of the combined West Sedona School. Current BPCS Principal Jay Litwicki has seniority and his school has better test scores than WSS under Scott Keller.
Keller has said he would be happy to return to the classroom should the schools combine, but it’s awfully presumptuous for Keller to assume he could take a classroom away from one the teachers who will be fighting to keep their jobs in a combined school.
Besides, given the budget crunch SOCSD claims it faces, it would make more sense to send a higher-paid former principal like Keller packing than to terminate the lower-paid teacher.
BPCS parents are being told their school must close to save money. West Sedona School parents are being told they must acquiesce to combining schools or they will lose all their special programs, yet the irony is that Lykins and Governing Board President Zachary Richardson created the financial mess they now face.
Mismanagement by Lykins and Richardson has driven parents to remove their children from the district, causing the slow enrollment decline to snowball into an exodus, cutting state funding.
Under normal circumstances, SOCSD could simply ask taxpayers for a property tax increase, but Lykins and Richardson have engendered such distrust in the community that their appeal for money to save the district they’ve rolled off the cliff would result in a Hindenburg-esque disaster in the ballot box.
Sedona wants the best for our children, but can’t trust this duo at the helm.
Board members John D. Miller, Tommy Stovall and Bobbie Surber are up for election this fall. Anyone who votes to close BPCS do so at their own electoral doom, should they opt to run. By November, that would likely leave the Governing Board with a majority in favor of reopening BPCS posthaste. Potential candidates, that’s your platform.
In the meantime, Village of Oak Creek students suffer from all this bad theater.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
* The board could also rescind Lykins $18,500 bonus and cut his salary down to $61,500, saving the district a grand total of $58,500.
