Vacant since last year, Big Park Community School in the Village of Oak Creek will soon have a new tenant renting part of the Sedona-Oak Creek School District campus: The Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind.
In May 2018, SOCSD was in disarray. Big Park Community School was closing and Superintendent Dave Lykins’ contract was not renewed.
These issues and $1.4 million in budget cuts were waiting on the desk of incoming Superintendent Dennis Dearden.
Starting June 1, he inherited a protracted and bitter resolution of the Big Park Community School.
“West [Sedona School] was built for almost 900 students, Big Park almost 800. Reality was they had 187 students [at Big Park] when it closed. You can’t keep schools open like that,” Dearden said.
With BPCS vacant the past school year, SOCSD announced that, in June, the Arizona State School for
the Deaf and Blind will become a new tenant, signing a one-year lease.
“The great thing about having the school for the deaf and blind is the school is serving other districts. I think it’s a benefit and it’s driving some revenue to our school district through rental,” Dearden said.
“We thought it would best serve the needs of our north-central cooperative and it was just a better fit having the headquarters in a school environment,” Ryan Ducharme, of the Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind, said. “Teachers, interpreters and Braille translators can maintain a source library and go directly to students.
“We look forward to a great partnership in the future.”
ASDB will only move employees to Big Park and only occupy office space in Building B for now and will not have any students this year.
“I think its a win-win for us and the type of people we want to see in that building,” Dearden said.
Next on the list of Dearden’s priorities was Proposition 447, the SOCSD budget increase override approved by voters on Nov. 6. The budget override allocates taxpayer funds to the tune of 15% of the school district’s budget — in effect, a raise.
“They were debating early on whether we should go for an override or not — was it good timing because of the controversy of closing a school? So we decided to take on that. We all contributed, worked hard and it passed,” Dearden said.
“I think it just showed that the community saw and acknowledged the decisions that we were making to strengthen the school, to provide for all the kids, to pool those resources, to provide as much as possible for all children,” Jennifer Chilton, director of operational services said.
In that spirit, more cost-cutting measures are proceeding. SOCSD will move from its administration building on Brewer Road to a few offices at SRRHS.
Again, the plan is to gather revenue from rental of the administration center. More favorable zoning laws will make the office tenant much easier to secure than the school.
While campaigning for passage of the budget override, Dearden listened to input from voters.
“There’s plenty of space at the high school … why don’t we close this [administration] building and lease it out?” Dearden said, referring to voters’ comments. “We’ve got several inquiries into that … we hope to get it done by this summer. That will be a real coup for us to get all these things done in one year.”
The effort to meet the goal of a balanced budget also involved what Dearden called a powerful strategic plan. He will take over as principal at Sedona Red Rock High School this fall while shouldering the continued demands of superintendent, all of this in a smaller office.
Current SRRHS principal Jay Litwicki has moved on to a new position in Camp Verde.
In addition, Dearden turned down an approved raise voted on by the school board.
“The board felt that I achieved my goals, but I felt that for me to take that tells people that I’m the only one working hard. I get a bonus, they don’t. I’ve never accepted those because I want a team,” Dearden said.
After a year of recovery from the Big Park Community School’s closing, the morale of the district is another responsibility Dearden accepts.
“We worked with a sense of urgency this year to fix some issues, re-structuring to allow us to balance the budget, be more efficient with our resources,” he said.
But Dearden has one additional motivation above all others.
“If I didn’t think I could turn this into a special place, I wouldn’t be bringing my daughter — my most precious person — here, and so I understand why parent’s leave. It’s their choice, so I want to work just as hard for every child as I do my daughter, to make this a great place, so that’s my challenge,” he said.
Don Eicher can be reached at 282-7795-ext.126 or by email at deicher@larsonnewspapers.com
