Several notable people within the Sedona-Oak Creek School District have left or will be leaving the district as the year draws to a close. These include long-serving janitor Alex Ramirez, who has retired after working for SOCSD for 20 years and three days; George Gleason, assistant principal and former boys’ basketball coach; and Assistant Superintendent Deana DeWitt, who will be leaving at the start of 2024.
Gleason’s last day was scheduled to be Friday, Dec. 22, and he was absent on sick leave for his final days, while Ramirez declined to be interviewed.
“[Ramirez] is a retirement of note, a retirement that deserves celebration and grieving,” SOCSD director of operations Jennifer Chilton said during the Nov. 7 Governing Board meeting in recognition of him. “[It’s] my bittersweet honor to recognize the retirement of Alex Ramirez. I literally don’t know what we will do without him.”
“Custodial positions are very difficult to fill anywhere,” SOCSD Superintendent Tom Swaninger said. “I worked in the east valley of Phoenix, and it was difficult to fill those positions. So being in the Verde Valley, where there is not as deep of a pool of people that you can pull from, it is extra-challenging to be able to hire and retain custodians. We are actively seeking to fill that position. It’s possible that as opposed to filling it with one full-time person, that we have to be a little creative and have multiple part-time custodians. Custodians that are also bus drivers, custodians that are possibly a teacher aide. We’re looking at all those options and trying to support maintaining the need for clean facilities throughout the district.”
DeWitt
“It’s kind of surreal,” DeWitt said when asked about her departure. “I haven’t yet processed [it]. My official last day is [Thursday] Jan. 4. So I’ve been kind of postponing everything. Everybody asks me or wants to get into it. But it just makes me so emotional. I’m like, ‘I’m not leaving yet.’”
Dewitt started working at SOCSD in July 2015 and has served as the assistant superintendent for the past five years.
“I’ve lived in the Verde Valley for more than 25 years; my husband is a fourth-generation Verde Valley native,” DeWitt said. “We have raised our two adult children here, and they are raising our four grandchildren here, soon to be five.”
Dewitt plans to stay in the Verde Valley and will be assisting her husband in running their Cottonwood-based business, DeWitt Excavation, because their long-serving office manager is also retiring in the spring.
“I’m not entirely certain what the future holds for me professionally, but I am excited about exploring new opportunities when the time is right,” DeWitt said. “I am not moving and plan to continue to be active in the community supporting causes that I am passionate about — all things education, the arts, supporting children and families in need, as well as improving opportunities for people with disabilities.”
A typical day for her has involved helping run both of the district’s campuses and all of SOCSD’s departments, with a focus this fall on preparing Heather Isom to be the new Sedona Red Rock High School principal and Swaninger to fill the superintendent’s role.
“Deana has been with the district for nearly a decade. So there’s a lot of institutional knowledge,” Swaninger said. “She’s very knowledgeable about many facets. Her role over the years was pretty diverse, and broad as far as your exposure to different elements of education, and different elements within the organization. So it was critical for me to be able to — when something would come up, she was a great person to go to to help gain a better understanding of institutionally the history of whatever topic it was, and provide broad and deep context to whatever scenario it was that I was trying to navigate through. She’s been essential.”
At the end of the semester, DeWitt’s office was filled with Christmas packages she was preparing to distribute to disadvantaged children in the district. The district currently educates 19 unhoused and foster students. DeWitt explained that while that number is down from 30 in the spring, it is also cyclical.
“In the spring our numbers go up, because the weather is better,” DeWitt said. “Typically, the numbers drop this time of year. However, this year, we’re even lower than we have been in years past and I’m not 100% certain why that is. Last week, we had 21 students. Two of those students are siblings [with a] single mom living in their car, and they just could not weather the weather anymore. They have relocated [to] the Phoenix metropolitan area … People who are not housed at all can and do often move to where it’s more mild. She actually was my only parent who was not working at the time; she was unemployed. But I do have two other unhoused families, they’re camping. And those families are working … in restaurants.”
When not working, DeWitt enjoys RVing with her husband in remote locations in order to disconnect from work in areas where there’s no cell service.
“For the second semester, the rest of our leadership team is going to take on the job duties that [DeWitt] oversaw, and then we are going to post that position, likely in February,” Swaninger said. “It will be an internal and an external post, and we’ll interview for it and hire.”
