The Sedona Oak-Creek School District held its first Community and Family Engagement event in the Sedona Red Rock High School library after its regular Governing Board meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 3.

“This is our first [and] I say first, because I hope that we are able to follow up with other community engagement events,” SOCSD Superintendent Tom Swaninger said. “I believe that this initiative to bring our community together is an absolutely critical piece to not only our school success, but also the success of our entire community.”

‘Love Our Schools’

Roughly 50 attendees had the opportunity to network and sign up for information about philanthropy in the district, SOCSD volunteer opportunities and teacher and staff appreciation.

One of the major focuses of the event was recruiting volunteers for campus beautification projects for SOCSD’s first “Love Our Schools” event on Saturday, Nov. 4. Volunteers can assist the school with cleaning windows, trimming trees, repainting stairs, refreshing the tennis court, power-washing the sidewalks and doing garden maintenance.

Projects at West Sedona School for the event will include stucco repairs, garden maintenance, filling in dirt and adding gravel.

The SOCSD has been unable to fill custodial and grounds staff vacancies in the district and is currently looking at thirdparty bids for those duties totaling $62,650. The district has also hired a landscaping company for grounds services at SRRHS for the remainder of the year.

Needs Assessment

The district is in the early stages of a needs assessment to determine the immediate and future needs of its properties; a contractor has not yet been selected.

“I think it’s responsible budgeting to have a multi-year plan in place,” Swaninger said. “It’s like owning a car, you’ve got to make sure that you’re changing the oil and the filters at the proper time. What we don’t want to do is ignore problems or potential problems by not maintaining the properties. I’m not saying that we have or haven’t done that. I just think it’s important to have a multi-year plan in place to be as fiscally responsible as possible.”

Swaninger said he hopes to engage the Arizona Department of Administration School Facilities Division in the process “to see if we can allocate any support for them [for] maintaining the two campuses that we have.”

“The needs assessment is one of the first steps for applying for renewal grant funding through the School Facilities Oversight Board,” SOCSD Director of Operations Jennifer Chilton said. “This would be completed by an external provider, one that would not be submitting a bid for any work to be completed upon SFB approval. In this process, we would prioritize our student campuses. If there is opportunity, of course, we would assess needs for [the Big Park Campus and the Brewer Road properties]. The areas to be assessed first include roofing, weatherization [building exteriors] and HVAC.”

SOCSD’s needs assessment is separate from a similar space study being conducted by Yavapai County. SOCSD is tentatively considering selling the Big Park Community School campus to the county depending on the results.

Budget Override Election

During the event, the Scorpion Booster Club also discussed the upcoming budget override election scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 7.

“To be very clear, the Booster Club is sponsoring this evening and that is the reason why we’re allowed to talk about the override on campus here at the high school,” Club President Heather Hermen said. “You’ll begin to get your ballot starting next week, you’ve probably seen the advertising … in case you didn’t know, we really want this to pass.”

“[The override covers] the next five years and that funding provides us with such programs as full-day kindergarten, because the state only gives us funding for half-day, and also for elementary art classes for some AP courses, because we get small number of kids in some courses. We couldn’t afford that without the override money, as well as some high school music programs like orchestra,” Governing Board President Randy Hawley told the nonprofit Big Park Regional Coordinating Council on Sept. 14.

Earlier in the evening, the board had discussed staff professional development, general updates and Swanginer’s new role in the district.

“Homecoming was last week,” substitute student representative Alana Schrader said. ”We had a few different events.Monday was Peachfuzz, which is boys playing volleyball; Powderpuff, which is girls playing football; and then there was the bonfire after [the] Powderpuff game and the soccer game, which was also on Tuesday … Friday was the pep rally where there was all the normal stuff, chants, lip sync [performances] … There was the Homecoming dance on Saturday, which was in the auxiliary gym, it sold 147 tickets, there were $2,940 in gross sales and $908 in net sales. So that was a really good event … There’s been Interact [Club], they’re helping this Saturday at the [West Sedona School Carnival]. And then Sedona Winds. There’s been a lot of people that have signed up to help with Sedona Winds on Oct. 22, and there’s lots of volunteer opportunities through Interact.”

The Governing Board approved adding an early release day at West Sedona School on Thursday, Dec. 21. This will coincide with an early release day for SRRHS and allow SOCSD to hold district-wide professional development covering student engagement “as opposed to doing something different on both campuses,” Swaninger said.

The Governing Board meeting also formalized Swaninger’s role as the new superintendent in approving fundraisers in the district as well as making him the authorized signer on a financial account and a food service agreement.

Hawley announced at the start of the board meeting that the district was awarded the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association for its annual comprehensive financial report for Fiscal Year 2022-23.

“This makes me very proud,” Hawley said. “A huge congratulations are in [order] for [Director of Finance Stacy Saravo] and our entire finance committee and members … The report has been judged by an impartial panel to meet the high standards of the program, which includes demonstrating a constructive spirit of full disclosure to clearly communicate [its] financial story, and motivate potential users and user groups to read the report. We knew we had a good deal but this defines that and so congratulations to [Saravo] and to [her] entire team.”

Interested volunteers should contact Sedona Red Rock High School Principal Heather Isom at isom@sedonak12.org or (928) 204-6786, or West Sedona School Principal Elizabeth Tavasci at tavasci@sedonak12.org or (928) 204-6601.