The Arizona State Board of Education released its preliminary school letter grades for 2022-23 on Friday, Oct. 27.

Sedona Charter School improved its grade to a B after receiving a C last year, which is still down from its pre-COVID-19 pandemic A grade. West Sedona remained at a B, which is an improvement from its pre-COVID C grade. Sedona Red Rock High School once again received a C grade, as it has for the past several years.

The state does not test the independent Running River School or Verde Valley School.

Schools are allowed to appeal these grades until Wednesday, Nov. 15, and the final ratings may undergo revisions after Dec. 4. Administrators for all three schools have so far stated that they will not be appealing their institutions’ grades.

Federal and state law mandate the utilization of the A-F letter system. The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, which replaced the No Child Left Behind Act, requires states to assess school performance by using dependable information across all educational institutions.

The grades assess year-to-year student growth, student proficiency on statewide assessments, English language proficiency and improvement, elementary students’ readiness for high school, postsecondary education readiness among high schoolers and high school graduation rates.

Out of the evaluated schools, 487 K-8 schools earned an A grade, 507 received a B, 302 received a C, 69 received a D and four received an F. Among the high schools covering grades nine to 12, 68 received an A, 104 received a B, 49 received a C, 6 received a D and 2 received an F.

Sedona-Oak Creek School District

“Overall our district is a B,” Sedona-Oak Creek School District Superintendent Tom Swaninger said during the, Governing Board meeting on Nov. 7. “Originally, the state marked us a C; we were right on the cusp of a C or B. But there was an error in their calculations and I received a correction a couple of days later that indicated that we are in fact a B district overall.”

To increase the grades, the district is considering separating the middle school from being graded with the high school, and Swaninger stressed the professional development of SOCSD staff as being integral to grade improvement.

“Although we maintained … there is a great focus for us to be an A district,” Swaninger said. “I truly believe with the right resources, the right efforts and the right support systems in place, that our elementary and our middle and our high school will be an A year in, year out.”

Sedona Charter School

Sedona Charter School has taken several steps to improve student performance for its 157 students. It has adopted a new curriculum, “Illustrative Mathematics” by Kendall Hunt, for its middle school students and executive director Amy Fultz credited increased communication with parents as having reduced tardiness and absenteeism.

“The state says if you have 10 or more absences, that’s [a] problem,” Fultz said. “We presented it to the parents, [that] you need to be on time, we’re looking at tardies. If your student has a certain number of tardies, which equals a certain number of absences, then, if your child is behind in subject areas, are they prepared to move on to the next grade? That has eliminated the majority of our tardies last year. On some days we had like a dozen kids tardy, and today we maybe had two or three students who were tardy.”

The letter grades can be viewed online at azsbe.az.gov.