Joseph City Unified School District is in the midst of a dramatic transformation, with several positions of leadership changing hands at once and a new approach to survival in an era of school choice and budget constraints.
Starting July 1, the district welcomed a new superintendent fresh from Alaska, a new elementary principal and director of special education services, and a new business manager. The timing of these simultaneous arrivals might seem daunting, but district officials say it provides an opportunity to look at how things are done with fresh eyes and to reshape the district’s future with intention rather than habit.
Superintendent Shannon Harvilla, who spent years in Alaska reopening a school that had been closed for five years and eventually running a small district there, said he came to Joseph City specifically because he believed the problems facing the district could be solved.
“I know Joe City was all over the papers last year with just financial issues,” Harvilla said during an interview this week. “But I look at it and I believe that the issues can be solved and Joseph City’s going to come out of this even stronger than we did before. I’m not going to blame it on Cholla (Power Plant) closing. I don’t think that hurt us like people thought it would. It’s really the ESA program and then the homeschooling.”
Harvilla’s assessment gets to the heart of what Joseph City faces. The Education Savings Account (ESA) program, which allows Arizona parents to direct public education funding to private schools, online programs or other educational vendors, has drained enrollment from the district. So has homeschooling. The result is a district that has spent down its reserves over years of trying to maintain programs and jobs even as student population declined.
“We have nothing other than what we need to operate this year,” Harvilla said. “We can pay our payroll, but if we don’t get more enrollment, if we don’t figure out other things, it’s just not sustainable. That’s why we’re on the list. We have no reserves. Like that’s a big goal over the board is to try to build their reserves back up. But it’s a fine line.”
The district’s enrollment hovers around 400 students in what Harvilla calls a good year. Of those, approximately 90 are bused in from Winslow through a school choice program, meaning nearly a quarter of the district’s enrollment could theoretically vanish if Winslow’s school district attracted those local students back. The district also serves students who have chosen it over Holbrook and other neighboring districts, largely because of small class sizes and specialized programs like auto shop and advanced science. Joseph City’s four-day school week is also a large driver for Winslow students.
Harvilla faces a more difficult challenge in addressing the ESA issue. He is deeply critical of the program’s lack of oversight and accountability. He pointed to what he called a micro-school operating from someone’s home, run by someone with no educational background, generating more income than a superintendent.
“There’s no oversight,” he said. “And you need serious oversight on ESA spending and who is claiming to run private schools in Arizona.”
Yet rather than fight the ESA program, Joseph City is attempting to become a vendor within it. The district’s board voted to allow ESA funds to be used for enrollment in individual classes. A student can take English or auto shop and pay a flat rate of one thousand dollars per class. For sports, the district is charging ESA families five hundred dollars per sport, which Harvilla said is fair because the actual cost is roughly $1,000 per child.
“We’re opening our doors to ESA students. We are now a vendor on ClassWallet. They can use their ESA funds to attend classes if they want to do core classes. If they want to do electives, they can use their funds.”
Harvilla acknowledged that opening the district’s doors to ESA students will not solve the budget crisis. But he framed it as a question of values.
“We believe in quality education for all kids, and we’re not going to hold back our excellent teachers and our wonderful programs from people because they’re choosing to do the ESA program,” he said. “And we can provide things that people probably can’t provide in home, like auto shop or business class, things like that.”
Yet despite these challenges, Harvilla and his new leadership team are not retreating. Instead, they are expanding programs, building community partnerships and even opening the district’s doors to ESA students who want to take individual classes.
Pamela Dean, the new elementary principal and director of special education services, arrived at Joseph City after spending three years in Tucson Unified School District’s curriculum department and serving in various administrative roles. She has 28 years in education, with 21 of those years spent in classrooms teaching everything from preschool to high school in nearly every subject. Her international experience includes teaching in Canada, China and Sri Lanka, and working online with students in 14 Asian and South Asian countries.
“I became a teacher originally because I wanted to travel and work and live in different places,” Dean said. “For the first 16 years, that’s exactly what I did. And then we moved to Tucson in 2016, and I fell in love with Arizona, and spent 10 years in southern Arizona, and now I’m in northern Arizona.”
The elementary school under Dean’s leadership is implementing a series of changes designed to do more with less. The most visible is the expansion of preschool. The district previously offered a morning and an afternoon preschool class. This year, it will offer two morning classes and one afternoon class, addressing a waitlist of families interested in early childhood education. “We found creative ways with the staffing that we already had to find that 10 hour a week position,” Dean said.
At the elementary level, kindergarten through second grade students now receive five special classes instead of the previous two. In addition to physical education and library, students now attend music, art and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) classes. The district is planning a fall musical called “Go Fish” for those grade levels as well. “The parents that I’ve talked to are really excited because now they have five specials instead of just PE and library,” Dean said.
Meanwhile, third through fifth graders are getting increased time in both math and language arts, with interventions provided for every child in both subjects. Dean said the changes were implemented through efficiency gains rather than by taking time away from other subjects or increasing teacher workload. “It’s just wasted time, wasted effort,” she said of the previous scheduling approach. “We’re (Dean and Harvilla) both efficiency minded people.”
The district is also revamping its special education department. A new sensory room is being created for students with individualized education plans (IEPs) who become dysregulated, meaning they struggle with body or mind control and manage normal responses. Dean explained that the room uses various sensory inputs like heavy pressure, light and touch to help children reset when they are overwhelmed or on the verge of a meltdown.
“The goal with the sensory room is that eventually a kid wouldn’t need it,” Dean said. “But if they start off with a large amount of time in there, but it helps them be focused and learning for the short amount of time in the classroom, then we can build towards more time in the classroom. So then we’re actually not only increasing the amount of time they’re learning, but the amount of time that other students in the room are learning as well because there’s less disruption happening.”
Every three weeks, the district is hosting enrichment Fridays, activities that were historically used for remedial tutoring but are now being repositioned as fun, curriculum-related activities. The twist is that these activities benefit local veterans and seniors. When third grade studies letter writing, instead of writing practice letters, students write real letters to seniors. Parent volunteers run the activities while teachers supervise.
“If you offer the right activities, then the kids and their families will show up,” Dean said, adding that it also builds family engagement and community connection.
The leadership team is also pursuing operational efficiency as a path forward. The biggest inefficiency identified so far is the heating and cooling system. The district has chillers that are roughly 20 years old and run constantly. The district hired a company to assess the possibility of installing smart zoned AC units that can be turned on and off based on which parts of the building are being used. “We don’t need to cool the whole thing on one unit,” Harvilla said. “We need smart controls.”
The district is pursuing public-private partnerships and grant funding to make such improvements without burdening taxpayers. Harvilla said he has been having numerous conversations with energy companies and other potential partners.
He has also been careful about discretionary spending.
“Over time, like as we were losing students, right, we didn’t want to lose programs. We didn’t want to lose the things that get kids to school. And we didn’t want to reduce the workforce because we are the biggest employer in our area. I think that just got a little hard to reconcile,” he said. “We just kept tapping into reserves and money we had saved for years down to the point where we have nothing other than what we need to operate this year.”
Looking forward, Harvilla said his priorities for the first 100 days are to listen and learn rather than make sweeping changes. He is not ruling out difficult decisions ahead. The district has already eliminated its in-town bus route for students living within a mile of school, a service the state does not fund. But he is approaching those decisions with the goal of maintaining what makes Joseph City attractive to students choosing to attend.
That appeal rests primarily on small class sizes. Harvilla said the district averages 17 students per class, with high school classes around 15 and elementary classes slightly higher. Students from Winslow in particular, are drawn to those numbers.
This presents a paradox. The more students the district attracts, the larger those class sizes will grow. But with larger enrollments comes the ability to hire more teachers and shrink class sizes again.
Students returned to the district’s campuses this week to a school system undergoing a lot of change and uncertainty. Harvilla emphasized that despite the significant challenges facing the district, he believes recovery is possible. “There is hope on the other side. We have ideas,” he said. “And I’m not here to vastly change anything other than cut budgets where it makes sense. We pride ourselves on a tradition of excellence, and we are not there right now. We need to get back to excellence in Joseph City.”
