Randy Hawley began his eighth year as president of the Sedona-Oak Creek School District Governing Board, the board voted during its meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 13. Lauren Robinson will continue as vice president.

The presidency and the vice presidency are each one-year terms.

The president runs the meetings and assists with the agenda, and the vice president steps in when needed or when the president is absent.
The board voted unanimously 40 to continue its meetings at 4 p.m. every second Tuesday of the month.

Board member Sam Blom was absent.

Robinson and board member Karen McClelland have terms ending on Thursday, Dec. 31, while Hawley, Blom and April Payne all have terms expiring in 2028.

Hawley said there was no opposition at the last election, so it’s hard to keep track of who’s having an election this year.

Despite the board positions being filled by the same number of candidates, board members say they are very pleased with how they’ve done over the past few years.

“We’ve got ourselves a district going in a good direction,” McClelland said following the vote.

Hawley began on the board right after he moved to Sedona and was quickly nominated to the board presidency. He said when he first got onto the board, it was “dysfunctional.”

The previous board had floated allegations among themselves of anti-Semitism and sexual misconduct and had threatened to investigate and censure each other. All the involved board members have since left office.

“The growth on this board has been tremendous and it is my intent to work with the board members here and continue to work together to support Tom [Swaninger, Ph.D., the superintendent] and the teachers and the students,” he said.

Hawley said student achievement has gone through the roof and instructional strategies have greatly improved in the past eight years.
During the meeting, the board approved the proposed academic calendar, which will be available online soon. The draft proposed calendar is available at the Governing Board website at sedonak12.org/governing-board, under the Jan. 13, list under the link “Attachment 7: Proposed 2026-27 Academic Calendar.”

With no discussion or comments from the board during the meeting, it ended after about 20 minutes.

“I think at the next board meeting, we’d like to have an item on there to move that all of our meetings will be the same time as this one,” Hawley said.

Flag Football

One of the activities SOCSD students can look forward to in the coming years is intramural flag football, Swaninger said in his update to the board.

“There’s more information to come on this,” he said. “Girls and boys learning the game and just having fun, and then it will end in a Sedona Bowl — so these are just Sedona kids that are participating in this.”

In previous meetings, Swaninger said the board may also petition the Arizona Interscholastic Association to offer flag football as a sport in the fall, but the intramural flag football would be its own sport that the district is still in the early stages of planning.