The Sedona-Oak Creek School District is hoping to put last year’s challenging school year in its rearview mirror as it prepares to welcome dozens of new students as well as several new faces teaching them.
“I feel a lot better than I did going into last year,” Superintendent Dennis Dearden said. “I don’t think the fear of COVID, at least among administrators, is over because we’re seeing numbers go up again. Masks are now optional by the governor’s orders. All of us know we have to be prepared for anything.
“But, I feel good about this year. If nothing else, we’ve learned that during difficult times kids are pretty tough when it comes to adversity. The biggest thing is that we found a way — as good as anybody in the state — of keeping people safe. We handled it pretty well and will continue that practice. We want to keep students in school. They want to be in school. We finished strong because we were able to finish with graduation and prom with no masks.”
The high school and middle school will be hosting a back-to-school night on Tuesday, Aug. 3, beginning at 5:30 p.m. in the Sedona Performing Arts Center, while West Sedona School will be hosting its event on Monday, Aug. 2, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
The upcoming school year begins Aug. 4 with in-person classes only. For those who do choose online learning, Dearden said it will be done through the Red Rock Academy.
As of earlier this week, the district is seeing a bump in enrollment by 50 new students. He said some of the credit goes to the district’s aggressive enrollment campaign through media advertisements as well as social media, thanks to a donation from Basil and Mimi Maher.
This will be the first year in which the high school campus will also be home to a full middle school of grades six, seven and eight. While they’re excited by the prospect of having a middle school, there have been a few challenges.
“It’s been a smooth transition in terms of parents and kids are concerned,” Dearden said. “The challenge is master scheduling for middle school and high school while still offering all the classes and being flexible to meet the needs of the students. In a small school like ours, it can be challenging — you have to be very creative when it comes to that scheduling.”
This year they will be going to a seven-period day. This is to help enable kids who struggled working from home last year to catch up. It will also allow the middle-school teachers to have a common planning period to address student needs. They will also be offering more tutoring opportunities to help those students who may have fallen behind a bit.
“It all sounds easy until you try and put it together,” he said, laughing. “We’ve had to have a lot of eyes looking at the master schedule to make it work.”
Between the two campuses, the district was seeking more than a dozen teachers going into this school year. Many of those vacancies were through retirement and some because they could no longer afford to live in the area or were unable to find housing. Dearden said they feel very lucky that they were able to find 14 new teachers from Arizona as well as from states as far away as Illinois and Pennsylvania. To date, they have just one position to fill, that being a special education teacher.
“One of the reasons we start very early with our hiring and recruitment process is because we want to make sure we get the best teachers,” he said. “Getting a good teacher in the classroom is the single most important thing you can do. We’re very honest in our recruiting. We tell them about the cost of living here, the housing market and the shortages, even if you can find a house. Everybody wants to be here but then they realize, as beautiful as it is, they ask themselves, ‘Where am I going to live?’”
As for fall sports, which for Sedona includes swimming, cross country, volleyball and soccer, the Arizona Interscholastic Association gave an update on Monday, July 26, as to its recommendations, which it states is subject to change.
“The AIA strongly recommends that all members of the athletic community who are able to receive the COVID-19 vaccine are vaccinated,” it states.
According to the AIA, fully vaccinated people can:
■ Resume activities without wearing masks or physically distancing at all team activities except where required by federal, state, local, tribal or school district laws, rules and regulations.
■ Resume competition schedules that require travel outside of their local community without testing before or after travel.
■ Resume domestic travel without testing upon return or having to self-quarantine after arriving back.
■ Refrain from testing following a known exposure if asymptomatic.
■ Refrain from quarantine following a known exposure if asymptomatic.
“Basically, they’re recommending that all athletes get the vaccine and if you don’t get a vaccine, you need to wear a mask during play,” Dearden said.
