For more than a decade, enrollment within the Sedona-Oak Creek School District has been on the decline.
While some of that is out of its hands, the district is not throwing in the towel and accepting defeat.
With an unexpected decline in students this year and an anticipated loss of 45 students next year, the district and its Governing Board are looking at ways to not only attract new students but maintain the ones they have.
While the district is aware of the potential number of students they are expected to lose — usually as a result of smaller kindergarten classes each year — they are now in the process of recruiting new students. One way is via a video the district is in the processes of producing that’s expected to be out this spring.
“I believe it’s going to be a top-notch video that we’ll be proud of and it will showcase why they need to come to our schools,” Superintendent Dennis Dearden said during a budget hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 2. “What’s going to be really important is that we continue to recruit and really define who we are and why they should come. We have to make our district the most attractive one in the area.”
To give some perspective in terms of diminishing class sizes, the current eighth-grade class has 75 students, the seventh grade has 55, the fourth grade has 45 and fifth grade has just 43 students.
Dearden pointed out the biggest challenge facing the district is the decreasing number of families with school-age children moving into Sedona or the Village of Oak Creek, primarily due to the high housing and rental costs and available jobs that would encourage those families to live here.
“The district has had this negative image for years,” Board President Randy Hawley said. “It takes a while to get over that. People are still thinking about five years ago instead of all the good things that have happened since Denny [Dearden] has been here. Somehow we need to continue to get that word out that this isn’t the same old district. It’s different and it’s better.”
If the recruitment is successful and the numbers begin to rise, Board Vice President Lauren Robinson said it’s crucial the school replaces the vacant vice principal position. Many of those duties have been taken on by the school’s counselor, which was a result of additional budget cuts. With the pandemic, Robinson wants the counselor to be able to deal full-time with those potential behavioral or social issues that may arise within the student body.
“The kids will need their counselor to focus on the counseling and you [Dearden] will need someone to help you,” Robinson said.
To that, Dearden added, “We’re working hard to make sure we’re growing this district. As we make cuts, we want to make sure we get better. We don’t want to be in survival mode, we want to be in growth mode.”
He also added that while he appreciates compliments like the one Hawley gave him, he said a leader is only as good as their team, and that’s what he is focused on building in Sedona.
When preparing the budget for the upcoming school year, Dearden said they always go for the worst-case scenario in terms of the number of students they lose. This year, however, no crystal ball or psychic could have predicted the losses the district would see.
In October, the district found itself $180,000 in the hole after projecting a loss of 30 students going into the current school year.
But as a result of COVID19 and other lesser factors, the district actually lost 80 students. But around that same time, Heather Burton, the district’s head of human resources and finance, and her husband, Don Burton, Sedona Red Rock High School’s athletic director and assistant principal, announced they were moving to Florida.
The district eliminated the assistant principal position while Stacy Saravo became the interim director of human resources and finance.
Between those two decisions alone, it saved the district a combined $132,000. Along with additional personnel changes and other minor cuts, they were able to reduce the budget by $188,475, leaving a net gain of $8,475. At the same time, the district has remained on track for a 3% carryover into the next school year, which equates to $174,000.
“I think it’s very important for us to have a reserve of some kind,” Dearden said at a workshop on Jan. 26. “If we go into every year dead broke, we’re just waiting for a catastrophe to happen.”
The district is already beginning to brace for another decrease in enrollment for next school year with an anticipated drop of 45 students district wide. This equates to $180,000 in reduced funding.
