In less than five years, Sedona-Oak Creek School District has gone from having a solid Montessori-based preschool at West Sedona School and an integrated preschool at the Big Park Community School to nixing the Montessori program and moving the integrated preschool to West Sedona School, making it into a special needs program with room for other tuition-paying families. Last year, an average of four students attended that program.

The district hopes its latest venture will be one that will last: A free preschool welcome to all area 3-,4-, and 5-year-olds.

With the spring closure of the 31- year-old Sedona Headstart program for low-income families that was renting out space from West Sedona School, the district realized that it would be beneficial to tackle the finan­cial responsibility of opening their preschool up for all. This will allow for a natural feeder into the district’s elementary and high schools, which would mean a much higher kinder­garten enrollment come fall 2021 and higher general district enrollment in the years to come.

Though Hanson was sad to leave the Headstart program behind after 15 years, she said she feels fortunate that her new classroom is just a “hop, skip and a jump” away. Assisting her will be paralegal turned-teacher Ana Alicia Cockrum, who led the district preschool in that same classroom last year.

Among the 14 current students, four are joining from Headstart. The waiting list for the new preschool is high, and West Sedona School Principal Aaron Coleman plans to add another paraprofessional to raise the enrollment to 21.

With district teachers starting Aug. 3, and online school starting Aug. 5, Hanson had two days to train with her new administrators and coworkers, prepare her classroom, learn how to run the class virtually and lesson plan.

“This is my first experience working for the state versus federal,” Hanson said. “It’s a new structure and it’s a new organization, so it’s just getting used to the people that I go to for certain areas, but everyone that I go to with the school district or the school have been really very supportive,” Hanson said.

The West Sedona preschool classroom is now a combination of furniture, toys and educational materials that were already in place from last year and what Hanson had accumulated from working in Headstart — both material objects and less tangible things.

“Through 15 years you buy a lot on your own — so I brought a lot of my personal things and all the experiences I had which were wonderful with Headstart,” she said. “I learned a lot there. So I took a lot and brought it to the class.”

The paint and easel, the library and reading corner, the block building area, and the tiny tables and chairs are all set up for the children’s use on Aug. 17, unless Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey pushes back that in-person start date.

“It’s center-based. So I set up the centers for the children to be able to openly explore and engage in play, learning,” Hanson said. “So it’s kind of open, an open-ended type of learning situation for each child.”

But for at least 11 days, Hanson will be greeting her new students and their families from a laptop in the childless classroom.

“Learning about online is very humbling, and the staff has been so supportive with that, so it’s just taking it one step at a time really with that,” Hanson said. “And our parents, with the conversations that we’ve had … have been really open to it and excited — they’re really excited about the preschool program and a lot of them are going to be participating.”

Hanson will be using Google Classroom for her live video chat from 8:25 to 8:45 a.m. each morning.

“We’ll just do a welcome and then I’ll sing a song. And I’ll treat it as if it’s the morning circle,” Hanson said of her plan for the first few days. “So we have morning circles, we have consistent routines and structures for the children every day … so they know what to anticipate and it gives them a sense of security. So we’ll kind of begin the day with that routine.”

If online learning were to be extended, Hanson said she would then get into more lesson-based activities virtually.

“Maybe, ‘today we’re going to talk about cutting with scissors.’ And then I sing a song about it and then I show them an example and we do activities together,” Hanson said. “We might do a science experiment on another day. We might do a block building experiment … but that’s if it extends.”

Hanson said she has been hoping since March that the schools will be able to open-up safely.

“I enjoy teaching preschool. It’s been a wonderful journey since I’ve been doing this,” she said. “The young child to me just carries such light and kindness in their hearts. It’s just a wonderful age.”

Though Hanson and all the other district teachers will be required to wear masks full-time upon reopening, the preschool classroom presents a unique position as far as student mask-wearing. The city of Sedona mandated that children age 5 and up need to wear masks. Hanson’s class will have at least one student turning 5 in September and more throughout the year, meaning that requirements will change for individual students — the younger students wouldn’t have to wear masks while the older ones would.

But mandates aside, Hanson is thankful that she is able to have the opportunity to continue to teach and work in the area she has grown to love since her sister “lured me out here from the cold winters in Wisconsin.” She’s glad that Sedona preschoolers will continue to stay in town, too.

“I’m really excited for the Sedona school and the community to have a free preschool since Headstart did close,” she said. “I’m excited that they have another option.”

Headstart Closure

In November 2019, the Northern Arizona Council of Governments, which runs the Headstarts in Northern Arizona, made a surprise visit to the Sedona campus to announce the closure of the three-decades old program there.

“It was a shock to all of us,” Hanson said. “It was sad. It was sad for the families and it was sad for the staff members, but they’re hopeful in their reconfiguration to create programs that are supportive as well for new initiatives that they started with their new grant.”

That reconfiguration means switching to a full-day structure only, and focusing more on Early Headstarts for infants and toddlers. Staff were asked to reapply to the Cottonwood or Flagstaff locations, and of the 36 families, those returning were also asked to transfer for the 2021-21 school year. A site in Flagstaff was also closed, as well as one in Prescott, Fredonia and Paulden.

“They came to that decision based on two previous years of enrollment. We were always fully enrolled, but we didn’t have a waiting list,” Hanson said. “And we had a couple of years that were low just because of Sedona losing population with families.”

In an email, NACOG Executive Director Jennifer Brown said, “The decision was extremely difficult and not taken lightly,” but would not respond to multiple requests for further explanation.

Alexandra Wittenberg can be reached at 282-7795 ext 126 or at awittenberg@larsonnewspapers.com