A new year of instruction started on Thursday, Aug. 3, for the 726 students who were enrolled as of Friday, Aug. 11, from prekindergarten to high school in the Sedona-Oak Creek School District.

The number of students enrolled at the start of this school year is largely consistent with enrollment levels for the last several years but represents a net loss of 19 students from the end of 2022.

Meanwhile, administrators have been touting the addition of over 100 students since May, including SOCSD Governing Board President Randy Hawley in his Aug. 10 update to the nonprofit Big Park Regional Coordinating Council.

“The number of new students that registered that were not with us last year [was] 110, that’s pretty consistent with what we’ve had over the last couple of years,” Hawley said. “We have quite a few new students not only moving into the Village [of Oak Creek] or Sedona but also from surrounding districts. We get a lot of kids from Cottonwood and in places in that area.”

“We have an exciting year ahead as we welcome 108 new students to our district,”

SOCSD Superintendent Tom Swaninger wrote in his Aug. 3 “welcome back” letter. “This positive trend reflects our community’s trust in the quality of education delivered at every grade level and in every classroom.”

The district’s net loss of 19 students was anticipated in this school year’s budget. SOCSD was “conservatively estimating [a] 40- student loss for the district,” SOCSD Director of Finance Stacy Saravo said at a school board meeting on Tuesday, July 11. “We remain cautiously optimistic that [average daily membership] loss will be much less. Any additional ADM after the 100-day will be captured in a future budget revision.”

SCOSD Student Enrollment

Sedona Red Rock High School

Sedona Red Rock High School is starting the year with a focus on preventing student tardiness to ensure every student attends every class in full.

“We will be assigning lunch detention every time a student is late to class,” new SRRHS Principal Heather Isom said. “I hope that this will motivate students to get to school and to their classes on time.”

SRRHS Vice Principal George Gleason, who was promoted to the position in July and was previously the middle school leadership teacher, also stressed to parents during the SRRHS Back to School Night on Tuesday, Aug. 1, that tardiness will be penalized with lunch detention.

“We are not going to [have an] exception for one tardy, one detention in the morning,” Gleason said. “So they will have to be here on time for school class. But again, I want to make sure that you understand where we’re coming from on this. We’re not trying to punish your children; we’re not trying to punish you. What we want is to give them every possible minute that we can.”

Isom said that the tardy policy is not related to the district’s post-COVID-19 issues of low attendance, adding, “We are fostering an environment of responsibility and academic rigor, and students are expected to be in class so they can learn.”

However, school staff’s current language mirrors previous statements by the district with regard to student attendance issues, which threatened students and families with the potential loss of credit if students had excessive absences.

“We haven’t changed [the tardy] policy, per se,” Isom said. “We are following the attendance standards set by the state, as we always have. We are utilizing the resources now available to us through the [Yavapai] County in engaging families through Juvenile Services when absences reach a point where a student’s academic success is at risk. We would like to identify and provide assistance for students struggling to get to school before credit is lost. In cases of excess absences, over nine per state regulations, students will be required to make up class time in after-school tutoring.”

The district is seeking a school bus driver, a position that pays $20 to $21.50 per hour, and a full-time groundskeeper.

“While that seems not a ‘major staff shortage,’ in a way, it is,” SOCSD Director of Operations Jennifer Chilton said. “In any district, bus drivers are essential; they are the first school employees a child sees each morning and the last to see them back home each afternoon. These can be hard-to-fill positions with the challenges of the licensing requirements.”

SOCSD is now offering American sign language classes after seeing a high demand from students, and Hawley said that the middle school will be implementing a new reading program.

During Isom’s address to parents at the Back to School Night, she said that the school is improving instructional strategies, professional learning communities and curriculum alignment.

“We are implementing Universal Design for Learning which is an instructional framework that enables teachers to provide differentiated lessons to accommodate individual learning needs, including the needs of English language learners and students with special needs,” Isom later elaborated. “Teachers and administrators will receive ongoing training on implementing best practices.”

“Curriculum alignment is the alignment of lessons, materials, activities, and assessments to state standards,” Isom added. “Our teachers post the daily objectives and activities, along with the state standard being addressed, within their classroom and on Google Classroom, a platform that can be viewed by parents.”

The Booster Club was also able to provide free physicals for students to join school sports this year through a partnership with Dr. Jason Wesley of Helios Health in Sedona.

“Over 45 showed up for [physicals],” SRRHS Athletic Director Pedro Ortega said. “It was very helpful, and then we hope we can attract more kids to play sports. [Overall] it’s going to be an exciting season for fall sports.”