The Sedona-Oak Creek School District announced this week that starting in August, it will offer bus pickup and dropoff service to Cottonwood. 

The service is “not only for the many of our students who currently arrive on the public bus, but also to make our programs and smaller setting available to newcomers,” SOCSD Superintendent Dennis Dearden said. 

The project is a part of SOCSD’s Strategic Plan that created new goals for 2019. 

“With our declining enrollment, the fact that we have kids using public transit — and its a hardship on their parents — we decided that we’re going to provide that transportation for them,” Dearden said. 

The transportation plan stems from the closure of Big Park Community School in June 2018.

“Right after they made that decision, we started getting inundated with calls and visits from those parents at Big Park that were upset about the closure,” Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District Superintendent Steve King said.

“By June of last year, we had 70 kids from Big Park that wanted to attend one of our schools during open enrollment. So, we made that decision to bus,” King said.

COCSD operates three schools in Cottonwood and one in Cornville for students up to eighth grade.

Changes in enrollment year-to-year are not uncommon, Dearden said. 

“We’ve had four or five [students] in just the last week that [will be] coming from Cottonwood. That happens all the time. We’ve got kids here that leave [Sedona Red Rock High School] for Mingus [Union High School],” Dearden said.

“Sedona has had some challenges with declining enrollment, so I can appreciate the intention behind providing school transportation while still considering the implications for school transportation throughout the Verde Valley,” said Genie Gee, acting superintendent of the Mingus Union High School District in Cottonwood.

COCSD and Clarkdale-Jerome School District students attend Mingus Union High School, which is in its own district.

“I know the position Sedona is in, and if they want to send buses into our district, that’s OK by me,” King said. 

“Cottonwood’s already doing that here,” Dearden said about the current buses that pick up students in the Village of Oak Creek. “They’re coming into Big Park and transporting those kids, and good for those families [if] they feel that’s where they want to go. It’s no different from what we’re doing.”

Schools are paid state funds per student enrolled, and Dearden and King said that comes out to about $7,000 a student. 

“The competition really comes from ourselves. We have to give parents choices. We have to give them what they need and if we don’t give them what they need, they’re going to go somewhere else,” Dearden said. “Part of marketing is providing the opportunities and necessities of education. “Instead of worrying about competition, our job is to make it the best school that we can in the surrounding area,” he added. “If we can do that … the competition takes care of itself.”

“It’s all about choice in Arizona,” King said. “Parents are offered a choice about open enrollment, charter schools, funding for private schools. That’s just the reality in Arizona. “I really believe we’ve got some positive relationships with the kids we serve and I would put our programs and our teachers and our philosophy of education up against anybody.”

Don Eicher can be reached at 282-7795 ext 126, or email to deicher@larsonnewspapers.com