Having been in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic for six months, no one was surprised to see that many changes were implemented within Sedona-Oak Creek School District this school year.
However, having three administrators leave by the first quarter was not one of those anticipated changes.
First to leave was Brenda Cady, who was the principal of West Sedona School for a year-and-a-half before taking over as director of Red Rock Academy in January. In mid-September, she left the newly-made district position of director of online instruction, with Mindy Patterson, from the Phoenix area, taking over the role.
Then, during the Oct. 6 SOCSD school board meeting, it was announced that Heather Shaw-Burton and husband Don Burton would be moving to Florida, meaning Shaw-Burton’s role in the district as director of human resources and finances, and Burton’s role as assistant principal and director of athletics, would both be ending effective Oct. 23.
Scorpions boys baseball coach Pedro Ortega Sr. will be taking over Burton’s positions of athletic director and boys basketball coach. However, Burton’s role as assistant vice principal at Sedona Red Rock High School, which primarily focused on student discipline, will be taken over by SRRHS counselor Jennifer Constantineau through the end of the school year.
The district’s current assistant business manager Stacy Saravo will be taking over Shaw-Burton’s expansive roles during the interim — at least until the end of the school year.
“I managed all of the district’s budgets, including state and federal grants,” Shaw-Burton said of her responsibilities. “I also managed personnel, including payroll, benefits, hiring and more.”
Taking on district finances won’t be easy, especially as COVID-19 has drastically changed the direction of the budgets and has lessened student enrollment numbers. Shaw-Burton will still be available for consultation, if needed, from Florida.
“I have considered myself blessed to work with such a great leadership team. I feel badly that some of what I do will fall on their shoulders,” Shaw-Burton said. “[Stacy Saravo and I] have been working together for the last month to make this as smooth a transition as possible.”
After three years with the district, Shaw-Burton’s hard work came to fruition on Sept. 25, when SOCSD was awarded excellence in financial reporting by the Government Finance Officers Association for its “comprehensive annual financial report for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019,” SOCSD Superintendent and SRRHS Principal Dennis Dearden announced in his monthly SOCSD Insights column, which appeared in the Sedona Red Rock News on Oct. 14.
“It has been a challenge doing the budgeting in a district with such a long trend of declining enrollment,” Shaw-Burton said. “It takes a great leadership team, outside of the box thinking, and annually looking at creative ways to become more efficient and do more with less.”
SOCSD has been battling with lower enrollment numbers for years, with many transient students coming and then leaving the area, SOCSD Assistant Superintendent Deana DeWitt said. Shaw-Burton also noted that “the cost of living in the area can be prohibitive for families to move to Sedona.”
But now with the pandemic, the numbers are even lower than expected.
There are currently 734 students between all district schools, both online and in-person, DeWitt said. This is a loss of 45 students from the 779 that were enrolled in the district on the last day of school in spring 2020.
“We have experienced a substantial loss,” DeWitt said. “A lot of it has to do with the implications of COVID. We’ve had families move simply because of financial need, employment reasons, moving with family, things like that. We have had student’s families pursue other options for education: Homeschooling, virtual, charter … for a variety of reasons [they] did not want to return to traditional school.”
Fewer enrolled students means less state funding. But while DeWitt anticipates this will be a concern for the 2021-22 school year when the district has to figure out how to absorb a roughly $200,000 deficit, right now, a CARES Act grant and enrollment stability grant are helping the district make up for some of its losses. By condensing some of the administrative jobs with the recent loss of staff, the district is actually operating in a surplus for the current school year, DeWitt said.
“Unfortunately, there have been hard staffing choices as our student counts have decreased over the years,” Shaw-Burton said. “It was also important to myself, and the leadership team, to put pay increases and reasonable benefits costs at the forefront of any budgeting process and value people over things.”
With students facing the decision to stay or leave the district, many staff members, too, are having to reevaluate staying in Sedona during this hard time — whether it be due to cost of living or wanting to be closer to family.
“COVID has made the idea of flying a bit unsettling for me,” Shaw-Burton said. “Being a drive [versus a flight] away will make seeing my family a lot easier.”
While Burton will take over as head basketball coach for a high school near Tampa, Shaw-Burton has been toying with a few very different options for when they settle out east.
“I am not sure what I will do when I get to Florida,” she said. “My passion is baking. Ideally, I would love to have a home-based custom baking business. Cupcakes anyone? I am also taking a tax preparation class right now with the thought that I could use my finance skills and do that working from home.”
