ASBA Policy
The Sedona-Oak Creek School Board had its first reading of Arizona School Boards Association Policy Advisories 961 to 1046 during its Tuesday, April 14, meeting. The updates include nearly 500 pages of personnel and district-wide policies and ethics codes. It is available for viewing on the district’s website.
“This is a pretty extensive list,” Superintendent Tom Swaninger, Ed.D., said. “There are some policies that are unique to us that may be affected by this … This policy update was pretty massive.”
The policy’s second reading will be during the board’s next meeting on Tuesday, May 12.

Board hears updates on hiring, partnership with city of Sedona

Sedona school class hours may increase for next school year, the Sedona-Oak Creek School District Governing Board voted 3-0 in favor on April 14. Members Sam Blom and April Payne were absent.

West Sedona School is slated to go from 8:45 a.m. to 3:05 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Sedona Red Rock Junior/Senior High School is set to extend just half an hour — starting at 8 a.m. and going to 2:55 p.m. instead of 2:25 p.m.

“The 8:45 to 3:05 is the lowest instructional minutes of anywhere that I was able to find in the state,” Superintendent Tom Swaninger, Ed.D., said. “It makes it very difficult, if not downright impossible, to reach the instructional minutes [needed], especially the service minutes for the [English Learner] population, special education, but especially our EL.”

He said the contract hours for the teachers will remain the same. Their contracts extend beyond instructional minutes, so the contractual time outside of instruction will decrease.

Their pay will remain the same, Swaninger subsequently said. The same is true for the middle and high school, which will also help for after school events, he said.

“When we have athletics here on campus, there’s quite a big gap right now,” he said. “And we’ve got our knuckleheads … of middle schoolers running around waiting for the sporting events to happen, and so we try to reduce that time a little bit.”

The school calendar that was previously approved for the 2026-27 school year was also updated to include Good Friday as a holiday for teachers and students on Friday, March 26, 2027.

Hiring

Hiring season is underway for the school district, Swaninger said. This is the time of year, when a lot of teaching contracts are up “is probably one of my least favorite parts of the year,” he said, “because there’s just so many unknowns.

“If someone wants to look for another opportunity, of course, you always want to support them in that. But we want our good people to stay, too,” he said.

He said he went to a job fair at Flagstaff’s Northern Arizona University — from where he earned his doctorate — looking for teachers, and has already had some applications.

“I check the applications pretty closely, and it was nice to see that we have … a few of them that were at the job fair that weekend, just a couple days later, they decided to apply,” he said.

Those interested in applying for any district jobs can apply at sedonacreek.tedk12.com/hire/index.aspx.

The board approved resignations for the athletic director, Peter Brock, effective at the end of the school year, along with three other high school teachers, one West Sedona teacher and one high school nurse.

The other biggest trouble in hiring remains finding enough bus drivers.

City Council

One of the main points Swaninger said was behind the discussions between the district and the Sedona City Council was shared athletic spaces.

“We have softball field, baseball field, we have, just behind us, this beautiful football soccer stadium, tennis,” he said, “With a school district this size, it’s extremely difficult to allocate the appropriate resources or find people with the appropriate level of skill to upkeep and maintain those fields.”

Having shared spaces means the public could potentially have access to it as well when it isn’t being used by the school. The city of Sedona could also help fill the need for bus drivers in the district.

“Maybe the guys that drive the shuttle bus during the day could pick up extra hours, maybe driving a school bus for some special occasion,” board member Karen McClelland suggested. “It just seems it would benefit the employees working for the city and our employees.”

The last time the school district tried to work with the city, McClelland said, ended with too many complications, because the city was trying to build a gas depot to save money on fuel.

“It became obvious there were just too many technical issues with that,” she said.