Dennis Dearden, who serves in the dual role of Sedona-Oak Creek School District superintendent and Sedona Red Rock High School principal, announced during the May 2 Governing Board meeting that he would be retiring at the end of September.

This brings the total of upcoming school district superintendent vacancies in Yavapai County to 10 as of May 6, not including Yavapai County School Superintendent Tim Carter, who is also retiring and will not be seeking another term in his elected post.

Dearden had been serving in dual roles as both district superintendent and SRRHS principal as a cost-saving move that saved the district $100,000 annually. That arrangement also came to an end with the board’s approval of teacher Heather Isom as the new SRRHS principal during the May 2 meeting.

“It’s with excitement and sadness that I leave the district,” Dearden said. “I’ve worked as hard as I could in this district the five years I’ve been here and I’m proud of that. Yet I’m excited about my retirement and new opportunities that lie ahead. But you always have sadness in terms of leaving the students and staff that you care about so deeply. It’s a normal process you go through. My hope is we’ll get a great superintendent that follows me and they’ll continue the trajectory that we started.”

Dearden said his decision was a matter of timing. His daughter will be graduating from SRRHS and enrolling at the University of Arizona soon and, at the age of 71, 2024 would have been his 50th year in education.

However, he said he is still as enthusiastic about education today as he ever was.

“Over the last couple weeks I’ve been thinking about my family,” Dearden said. “Unexpectedly, I lost a brother-in-law over spring break who was younger than I. Yet [he had] been retired for 12 years, and I’ve never had that benefit. I’ve always worked and taken very little vacations. In my last five years of my career, I’ve worked two jobs.”

Dearden signed a three-year contract that was due to expire next June, and added that superintendent’s contracts allow the individual or board to give 30 days’ notice to end the agreement.

When Dearden first came to Sedona, SOCSD was around $1.3 million in debt, which forced a district restructuring to balance the budget, including the May 2018 decision to close Big Park Community School in the Village of Oak Creek.

Another move was to have administrators fill dual roles, with Dearden as both principal and superintendent, Stacy Saravo doing human resources and finance, Deana DeWitt taking care of curriculum and grants as assistant superintendent and Jennifer Chilton overseeing operations as well as communication and teacher evaluations.

The SOCSD board voted to use the Arizona School Board Association to conduct the search for Dearden’s replacement. The process will involve an association representative meeting with the SOCSD board to decide on a timeline and desired qualifications for applicants, followed by a survey of staff and community groups to determine their priorities.

“Then at some point, depending on the timeline, they will present the board with a slate of candidates,” Dearden said. “Then it’s up to the board to decide if the candidates meet their expectations, their qualifications, and select a number of those candidates to maybe go into a first round of interviews … Pare it down to maybe a couple of finalists and then do a community forum so that the community gets to hear the [candidates], their philosophies, and then the board selects the superintendent.”

Dearden attributed a trend of seeing fewer applicants for superintendents’ positions to the political climate surrounding schools as well as the housing crisis.

SOCSD Housing

“We started offering transportation to Cottonwood [for students] and started attracting [more students] because it’s an open enrollment district, anybody can come to our school,” Dearden said. “So over the last several years, we’ve been able to increase our enrollment. I don’t know if that will continue. It’s tough to do when you’re living in Sedona where housing is very expensive and families can’t afford to live here.”

He listed addressing housing as one of his proudest achievements during his tenure. As an educator, Dearden never foresaw “landlord” as being part of his job description; however, SOCSD is in the process of a $3 million project to convert a building at BPCS into affordable housing units for teachers.

In March, SOCSD received a $500,000 matching grant from the Yavapai County Educational Services Agency to be spent on construction and project costs, and it has to be spent by September 2024. The district is on target to finish the project sometime before next December even though construction hasn’t started yet.

“We’re fortunate Basil and Mimi Maher [donated],” Dearden said. “That’s why we went after the grant also to supplement that. It’s interest-free, no cost to the district and the construction costs will be paid back to them from the rent of the condos that we will build in Big Park. We’re using the C building, it’s one row of buildings. The plans are to get 10 or 11 one- and two-bedroom condos.”

“From the grand standpoint it does have a deadline. What we’re hoping is to have as many people in those homes by early next school year as possible,” Carter said.

Rumors of districts teaching “critical race theory” and other controversial content also influence superintendents, Dearden said. Last year, a couple that visited SOCSD were curious to see if the district was teaching CRT.

“They came for a week and looked at every textbook and ended up writing us a check, and said ‘Good job. Use this money for whatever you want in your schools,’” Dearden said. “I’m certainly not aware of people in our area that’s [teaching CRT]. We’re all trying to do the best job that we can for our students and the shootings that are occurring across the nation, you just pray that nothing will happen in your school.”

Dearden remains optimistic about the future of SOCSD.

“I’ve always believed that the indication of a strong town or community is a school,” Dearden said. “You need a vibrant school district. My hope is that people will see that we’ve improved that, and the next superintendent has to take it to another level.”

Future progress at SOCSD will require getting students caught up after the forced closures of the COVID-19 pandemic, raising test scores, especially in math, and creating student programs that meet families’ needs because of competition from charter schools.

“One of the biggest highlights for me has been you’ll see me out on the bus loop every single morning and evening greeting kids, greeting parents,” Dearden said. “I love that, not many superintendents get to do that.”