The Scorpion Booster Club recently contributed $8,493 to Sedona Red Rock High School for repairs to the baseball field, as well as $520 for a new sink for the special education department.

After the completion of the baseball season in the spring, SOCSD made an assessment of the field and concluded it needed  maintenance given the theoretical potential for injuries from gopher holes.

“It wasn’t necessarily unsafe but this is to prevent any [injuries],” SRRHS Athletic Director Pedro Ortega, Sr. said. “We felt that it  was time [to] redo the fields, and resod it and then maintain it a little better for the upcoming season in the spring.”

The outfield and infield are also being releveled.

“Booster Club decided to do [the repairs] after talking with Mr. Ortega. It’s not in the district’s budget to fix it,” Scorpion Booster Club President Heather Hermen said. “We applied for a grant from [Arizona Community Foundation]. But rather than waiting to find out if we had gotten the grant, we decided to just go ahead and fund the project and have Villegas Landscape do the repairs on it.”

“My guess is that because of the financing, financial considerations and other priorities, they probably couldn’t do as much landscaping and maintaining of the field that would have been required to keep it [well-maintained],” SRRHS baseball coach Stephen Hanks said. “The outfield, for instance, needs to be leveled off and some patching done to avoid some divots and holes and grass overgrowing. Basically everything needs to be smoothed out. So when you’re playing a baseball game, the hops can be truer. So the fielders aren’t dealing with potentially bad hops that could potentially cause injuries.”

Hermen attributed the lack of maintenance to the district’s priorities changing during the COVID- 19 pandemic response.

“But it was also a staffing issue [because] finding people to work in those positions is a difficult one, especially in maintenance and grounds,” Hermen said. “I think it’s always a struggle for those positions because they’re not exactly the highest-paid positions. So finding quality people who have the skills and the knowledge set to do all of that was a struggle on behalf of the district.”

“We’re always short on the staff, so [SOCSD Director of Operations] Jennifer Chilton is working hard on getting staff,” Ortega said. “We have an opening job for [a] maintenance [and] groundskeeping guy but we  haven’t been able to hire one. One of the options is to hire someone who [can] maintain those fields, or contract [an] outside company to maintain those fields.”

“As [the Sedona Red Rock News] has reported on before, staffing can be difficult in Sedona because of the high housing costs, and, of course, as a school district we have to budget carefully within our means,” SOCSD Superintendent Tom Swaninger said. “At the moment, we are initiating service provider contracts for both janitorial and grounds support as we anticipate long-serving support staff retirements.”

During the last month, SOCSD has been receiving bids on third party contracts for those services.

The decision to outsource some of the grounds and janitorial positions has been driven less by cost than lack “of viable applicants.”

“Open positions have been posted dating back several months and we have yet to fill this need,” Swaninger said. “The district has procured a janitorial company to clean buildings at West Sedona Elementary for the remainder of the school year. The cost of this service is essentially a wash in comparison to filling the two open custodial positions that we have been unable to fill.”

SOSCD has also hired a landscaping company to provide grounds services at SRRHS for the rest of the year because of short staffing as well.

“Procuring the services of the landscaper is slightly more than the cost of a full-time grounds staff member,” Swaninger said. “Overall, the cost of this realignment is very close to the same as hiring for the open positions we  have been unable to fill. The move is less about cost and more about finding a way to fulfill this need.”

The purchase order for custodial work is $28,800 and the order for grounds work is $34,650, which is below the threshold that would require a vote by the SOCSD Governing Board.

Once the field repairs are complete, Hermen said the Booster Club may consider fundraising to have Villegas Landscape provide training to SOCSD staff on field maintenance. The club has not received any other recent requests for funding repairs from SOCSD.

Hermen anticipates that the baseball field repairs will be completed by the middle of October.

“I’m grateful to the Boosters for agreeing to do that,” Hanks said. “Because they have a lot of commitments, and … hopefully the kids will improve as baseball players because the field is in better condition.”

An upcoming opportunity for residents to contribute to SOCSD campus beautification will be “Love Our Schools Day” on Saturday, Nov. 4.