On June 20th, KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher asked Park City School Board President Andrew Caplan if he was going to let the new school board decide whether to renew Superintendent Jill Gildea’s contract. Dr. Gildea is one year into a two-year contract, and the board must notify her by February 1, 2025, if they intend to renew it.

Mr. Caplan responded, “No, that’s a decision made by this board and will happen this year.”

I believe that is a mistake. The Park City School Board has five members. School Board President Caplan and Vice President Wendy Crossland are not running for reelection this November. Current board member Anne Peters is running against Susan Goldberg in District 1 (Old Town, Prospector, PC Heights). That means at least two and potentially three board members will be new next term. I believe it is the responsibility of this board to leave the decision on renewing the superintendent until a new board is seated.

This is important for five reasons:

• Respect for Electoral Mandate: The newly elected board members represent the most recent preferences and views of the electorate. Allowing them to have a say in significant decisions like renewing the superintendent’s contract aligns with the democratic process.
• Legitimacy and Trust: Renewing a superintendent’s contract just before new members take office undermines the authority of the incoming board. This can create distrust and a perception of illegitimacy, potentially causing friction and reducing overall effectiveness.
• Fresh Perspectives and New Ideas: New board members bring fresh perspectives and may have different views on the superintendent’s performance or the school district’s direction. Their input could be valuable in making an informed decision about the contract renewal. In fact, Andrew Caplan cited New Ideas as a reason for not running for reelection.
• Accountability: The outgoing board might lack accountability to the electorate for decisions made at the end of their term, particularly if they are not seeking re-election. Allowing the new board to make the decision ensures that those who will be accountable for the outcomes are the ones making the decision.
• Transparency and Fairness: Waiting for the new board members to participate in the decision-making process promotes transparency and fairness. It ensures that all relevant stakeholders have a voice in critical decisions affecting the school district’s future.

With this in mind, Karl Persson and I launched a Petition to ask the current school board to adhere to the existing schedule and let the incoming board decide whether to renew Dr. Gildea’s contract. This petition does not ask the board to reject Dr. Gildea’s renewal. It simply asks for the decision to be made by the next school board—the one that will have to live with that decision.

If you support this idea, please consider signing the petition:

I remember walking down a hall in Junior High in the middle of Kansas. My friend Tim and I would walk the long hall, and way too often, someone would come up behind Tim and punch his books out of his hands. Papers would fly; books would scatter.

“Dork”
“Loser”
“Faggot”

… would be shouted by the bully as he walked off — triumphant in whatever game he thought he was playing.

Thirty years on, I can still picture it in detail. It was terrible.

I wish bullying was some artifact relegated to my teenage years and a John Hughes movie, but it seems to be alive and well in Park City in 2023.

I’m hearing from parents that their kids are being bullied in Park City schools, and nothing is being done. Worse, I am hearing that school district officials have been notified and are not intervening. Instead, officials are offering platitudes.

If your child is experiencing this, they aren’t alone. There are asshole kids, asshole parents, and teachers and administrators who sometimes don’t do much about it.

I’ve met with parents who are organizing to stop this behavior in Park City schools. If you are having trouble and would like to be put in contact with parents who have children in similar circumstances, please reach out to me at . I will put you in contact with people who are having similar issues and want to make a change.

I know it’s not easy. However, together, we can make things better.

The Park City School District is teaching a masterclass on deflecting, delaying, and denying responsibility. Fortunately, for our children’s sake, the class is almost over.

Since 2017 the Park City School District (PCSD) has been storing soil with lead and arsenic next to Treasure Mountain Junior High. Toxic soil, or what is officially called “solid waste” by the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), is only to be left at a site for a few months, not six years. While the dangerous soil is in place, it is supposed to be covered by a cap. A cap is basically “good” soil covering the bad. However, testing this summer found that the cap was not thick enough and lead was being exposed at higher levels than codes allow.

Yesterday, Salt Lake Tribue Reporter Michelle Deininger reported that the School District must act now to clean up the waste. She reported, “The Utah Department of Environmental Quality has told Park City schools time is running out to submit a formal plan for removing contaminated soil piles at Treasure Mountain Junior High. The plan was due in January 2023, and a deadline extension passed six months ago. If the project is not finalized by year’s end, the DEQ said the EPA will assume responsibility on Jan 1, 2024.”

Further, the Salt Lake Tribune reports that “The latest DEQ letter refuted recent public comments by Park City Board of Education President Andrew Caplan, who said the district did not know whether or not the piles needed to go and the DEQ was ‘still looking at it.'” The DEQ letter states, “The soil piles remain in violation of the previously cited regulations within this letter and remain in very close proximity to both the TMJHS and McPolin Elementary School. The direction to remove these soil piles off-site … remains unchanged.”

Let’s cut to the chase. There is soil containing lead and arsenic piling up next to TMJH and McPolin Elementary. In testing a few months ago, the dangerous soil was not covered appropriately. It could have exposed community members to lead and arsenic. A plan to remove the soil was due to the DEQ in January 2023. The school board said they weren’t sure whether they needed to remove the dangerous soil, but the DEQ seems to refute that by saying they told the district they needed a removal plan in 2022. The district says they NOW have a plan, but they can’t share it with us because it is a draft. The DEQ says they will request the EPA to take over if a formal plan isn’t in place by January 1, 2024.

It’s another case of PCSD acting like they are above the law. They don’t need building permits. They don’t report abuse. They don’t clean up their waste.

PCSD estimated that cleaning up this soil would cost between $3 million and $13 million. When the EPA gets involved, which number do you think it will be closer to? Oh, and the EPA will bill PCSD for every penny and more. That means everyone related to the school district will be impacted: students, teachers, and taxpayers.

The school district has two months to put a plan in place to remove the dangerous soil. That should have been done five years ago. For years they have deflected, delayed, and denied responsibility. If the EPA ends up taking over, things will get very real, very quickly, for the School District Board members and Administration.

Either way, the jig is up for Park City Schools. Either they fix it or the EPA does. At least our children and teachers will be safer.

However, what does it tell us about our school district? These are the people who are ultimately responsible for teaching our children. If we can’t trust them to clean up lead and arsenic next to our schools, how can we trust them with anything else? Let’s hope they finally decide to do the right thing and clean up this mess. Furthermore, let’s hope no students, teachers, or community members develop complications from their actions.

However, if the EPA is forced to step in on January 1st, it’s time for a complete reboot of the Park City School District.

At some point, the school district has to be held accountable for the plethora of scandals that have arisen during Superintendent Gildea’s tenure. If hate speech, swastikas, magic rocks, building permits, non-reported abuse, teachers not invited back, bullying, employee daycare, substitutes, refusal to speak with the media, bus issues, and forcing the Summit County Health Department to descend on Parley’s Park Elementary don’t cause the public to demand a change, I’m not sure what will.

Maybe an EPA takeover due to inaction over lead and arsenic next to our kids will mean something — but I doubt it. Change starts at the school board level and then filters down.

Either Jefferson or Mencken was right.

Thomas Jefferson said, “The government you elect is the government you get.”

H.L. Mencken said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Maybe they were both right.

If you read one news story this weekend, read the Salt Lake Tribune’s “Park City School District was supposed to clean up soil years ago. Here’s how much it will cost now.” The background is that soil with lead and arsenic was put into piles behind Treasure Mountain Junior High (TMJH) during construction in 2017. In the years since, more potentially hazardous and contaminated soil was added to the piles. In 2019, the Park City School District added the cost of soil removal to its Master Plan. In 2021, district and city officials discussed removing the piles. As we start the 2023 school year, nothing has happened, and those piles remain. Here’s the kicker. Those toxic piles are only supposed to remain onsite for 90 days. Currently, they have been there for almost 6 years. According to the article, School Board President Andrew Caplan was questioned about this, and he responded, “Our admin team is in charge of educating 4,600 children and supervising around 800 employees whose job it is to do the same. They are also called upon to manage quite a few facilities, which is a secondary responsibility to education. Because this is not their expertise they do the best they can with their knowledge and limited bandwidth.” A district spokesperson also apparently said that the district preferred to look ahead and not assign blame. As a parent of a child in the district, I hear, “Sorry we may be poisoning Park City’s children, but we have a school district to run.” I do know the district has stated that these piles are not harmful. However, when they appear to not be following rules regarding contaminated substances, and had the incident at McPolin last year, it doesn’t give one faith. So, where does this go?

• There will likely be a cleanup effort that will cost between $3 million and $13 million to remove these piles of toxic soil.
• PCSD likely can’t clean that up during the school year, even if they wanted to, or they would further expose children when they disturb the soil.
• I don’t see how they can economically tear down Treasure Mountain Junior High because they will disturb even more soil.
• I also don’t see how they can encourage other entities to buy it with its contingent liabilities.
• When will the lawsuits come? Lead and arsenic can cause learning disabilities, impact growth, and lead to cancer. At some point in the future, PCSD will be sued over these issues.

The District appears to have been aware of the problem for years. The soil impacted children with the closure of the McPolin playground last year. Yet, the school district doesn’t seem to be willing to solve the issue. The school district cites that they didn’t know the toxic soil should be removed after 90 days. Ignorance is not a defense. I guess lack of logic isn’t a defense, either. If this were a one-off, I might cut the school district some slack. We all make mistakes, but it’s how we react to mistakes that define us. However, the Park City School District has a pattern of mismanagement. It’s gone beyond a failure to report abuse, not applying for building permits, and not treating teachers respectfully. Now, it allows toxic soil to sit for years and potentially impact our children. It’s a dark time for the Park City School District. For a school district with only 7 schools, 4,500 students, and a lot of money, they can’t seem to get out of their own way. I feel for the students who will be impacted by the district’s poor decision-making. Again, I would encourage you to read the Salt Lake Tribune’s article. They have much more detail on the subject. Update: There was additional information provided related to the Sal Lake Tribune article: “State code requires piles that have been in place for more than 90 days be inspected and approved by the Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control before they can legally be stored any longer. PCSD did not do that – the piles were only inspected on September 16, 2022 after a contractor called the DEQ with questions about them.”