SEDONA AZ (October 24, 2015) – At the October 5 Sedona Oak Creek Unified School District (SOCUSD) board meeting, Superintendent David Lykins announced upcoming meetings designed to improve the Sedona-Oak Creek School District and identify challenges.
“Our student numbers are down 23.4 percent in 10 years and we’ll be operating next year with much lower funding,” Lykins said. “Our goal is to engage the community in a very transparent process to gather information from the forums as the foundation for identifying strategies to move forward. Through this process, we get to hear what the community has to say and for them to be involved in establishing a direction for the district to provide quality education that maximizes what we have and is supported by our fiscal capability.”
The first open forum was held 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 15 at the Sedona Performing Arts Center at Sedona Red Rock High School.
A second meeting is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 7 at Big Park Community School.
Lykins said data from the forums will be reported during the board’s November and December meetings “to help shape our budgeting process that begins in January.”
“For ten consecutive years, we have been losing kids from the Sedona Oak Creek Unified School District in a trend that is not going to stop,” Lykins said. “This is not a problem someone is causing. It is the current reality and is a situation we need to address as a community to ensure that we continue providing quality education to our children.”
The Oct. 15 forum was facilitated by Karen Loftus, Leadership Development Director for the Arizona School Boards Association.
Presenters included Yavapai County School Superintendent Tim Carter; (Legislation and What is on the Horizon); SOCUSD Finance Director Colleen Toscano (School Finance in Arizona); and Lykins (SOCUSD Reality By the Numbers).
Among other items at the Oct. 5 board meeting was the presentation of two awards to SOCUSD Finance Director Toscano.
She received the Award of Financial Reporting Achievement from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada and the Certificate of Excellence in Financial Reporting Award from the Association of School Business Officials International.
“Colleen is a key member of our leadership team whose high standards for excellence, credibility and ethics stand as a model not just in our district, but for districts across the state,” Lykins said.
For more information about the Sedona Oak Creek Unified School District, visit www.sedona.k12.az.us.