For a dozen years the Sedona-Oak Creek School District has been losing students for a variety of reasons — including the lack of available and affordable housing for families.
But despite many obstacles that are out of school official’s hands, the district is trying new ways to encourage students to enroll with them as well as recruiting teachers. The most recent way is through a five-minute video that features the school, the area and its students and faculty. It’s being put together by Jeremy Hawkes and is expected to be presented to the district within the next week.
“I don’t have any control over the housing issues and that’s what hurts a lot of young families and prevents them from moving here,” Superintendent Dennis Dearden said. “It’s the same way when recruiting teachers. They all want to come here but once they’re here, they can’t find a place to live.”
Lately, he said school officials have been putting their efforts into creating an environment that would attract students locally.
“How do you do that?” he said. “Well you have to tell your story or your story is going to be told for you. People who didn’t like the district or had a bad experience with the district in the past are still going to be the voice of telling that story. We’ve made a lot of changes. We’ve created some programs that are unique for this area, especially for a small school district and we want to continue to build on that.”
One of the strategies school officials came up with to tell their story is to create two videos — a 30- second commercial-type one and the longer version. The 30-second version is a snippet of the school and area while the longer version will highlight the various programs and extracurricular activities the schools offer as well as the students themselves.
So they had the idea but the next questions was, how would they cover the price tag for the two videos, which was around $5,000? The Sedona-Oak Creek Education Foundation saved the day and sponsored the undertaking.
“From what I have see, it’s coming out really well,” Dearden said. “My guidelines were very simple. What I told [Hawkes] was that I wanted him to capture the uniqueness of this district. Why would a parent send their kid here or why would a student want to come here? Basically, what’s different about this district compared to others?
“I wanted him to capture this from the hearts of the kids. When kids talk from the heart about why they go to this school, why they’re proud of it and the unique programs we offer, that gets people’s attention. Right now all we have is our website and if people are moving into the area, it really doesn’t tell our story.”
As far as how they plan to distribute the video, Dearden said SOCSD will put it on as many social media platforms as possible. The shortened version will be shown at Harkins Theater in Sedona as well as this June’s Sedona International Film Festival before or between films. They will also use the video when bringing in new teachers. They begin their recruitment early on in the calendar year.
“That’s the only way you get the best of the best is to do it early because you’re competing with many others,” he said. “We can tell them, enthusiastically, about the district but when they see something, that’s a big advantage for us.”
With open enrollment, the video can be used to draw students from not only other Sedona schools but from neighboring communities as well. Dearden said it’s not uncommon for a student to attend West Sedona School and their older sibling to go to school in Cottonwood or vice versa. Since January, the district has increased by 24 more students from the Verde Valley as well as those whose families have moved to the area.
“We want to be attractive to them and capture every kid we can,” he said. “We never bad-mouth any other schools or districts — we simply want to be the best.”
Hawkes said in all he took about 20 hours worth of video that needs to be condensed to five minutes or less. The video can be updated or modified at any time in order for the district to use it for several years to come.
“The types of things I was looking for to include in the video were interviews from both students and instructors, visual references of resources and accommodations, participation in school activities and, of course, the beauty of the campuses,” Hawkes said. “One example would be to follow the students in their studies showing the activity they described in the interviews.
“The message we are trying to convey about the district is the value of our education in a small town and the unique opportunities the school district provides.”
