It’s time for Park City Superintendent Dr. Gildea to ride off into the sunset

All good things come to an end.

Unfortunately, so should be the tenure of Park City School Superintendent Dr. Jill Gildea. That’s the conclusion I come to after reading Michelle Deininger’s KPCW article on how the Superintendent handled the mask mandate this December at Parley’s Park Elementary school.

Here are the key takeaways from the KPCW article (credit to KPCW for the points below):

• When Parley’s Park hit the Covid threshold, the Park City School District sent emails to families and staff saying the mask mandate was in effect.
• Emails show Superintendent Jill Gildea did not believe schools could enforce it, and communicated that to the Park City School Board and Parley’s Park Principal Kim Howe before the mandate started
• In an email to Howe Oct. 31, the day before the mandate began, Gildea said students could simply not wear masks, and teachers should “welcome the students to class and keep rolling.”
• That same night, she emailed school board president Erin Grady that “even with the mandate in place, there will still be students/staff not wearing them, and there is nothing legally we can do about it.”
• According to the Summit County Attorney, Gildea didn’t communicate the district’s perspective on the mandate to the health department until the next day.
• The school didn’t enforce the mandate.
• When KPCW contacted Gildea she first said that the school was complying.
• Later Gildea told KPCW that parent complaints were likely from the prior year.
• County Attorney Margret Olson told KPCW that Gildea had told her that she [Gildea] wasn’t familiar with what was being communicated at Parley’s Park that week.
• However, 1,500 pages of emails obtained through a public records request show Gildea had been communicating specifically about that subject all week with the principal, parents, and the teachers’ union.
• In explaining the district’s position to the health department that first week, Gildea forwarded an email from the district’s lawyer. It cited Utah code that forbids schools from enacting mandates. The lawyer said an argument could be made for schools enforcing a mandate enacted by the health department, but that that was “slicing the onion pretty thin.”
• Summit County Health Director Phil Bondurant replied that he disagreed. He reminded Gildea she told him schools would enforce the order, writing that if they didn’t, it’s “nothing more than a suggestion.”
• In one of Howe’s [PPES Principal] emails that week, she assured Gildea she would continue to message as Gildea guided her to, even after the health department told the schools to enforce the mandate. In that thread, Gildea emailed Howe that under the county order, schools can send unmasked people home. Howe asks if she should do that. Gildea said no.

This is a bombshell. From the reporting, it sure looks like the Superintendent provided false information to the Summit County District Attorney. Dr. Gildea is the person responsible for teaching our children and I am not comfortable with the person responsible for our education lying.

To my friends who are opposed to masks, I will tell you this isn’t about masks. It is about schools following the law — which I am sure you are in support of.

Equally unacceptable is Dr. Gidlea allegedly telling Parley’s Park Elementary that Summit County Health Department’s order is unenforceable. I wonder if that is because she thought it would be hard, whether she didn’t want the backlash, or whether she just didn’t want it. The fact is that it was the law. It should have been enforced.

I also wonder what other things she finds unenforceable:

• Bullying?
• Harassment of students via Swastikas and other Nazi paraphernalia?
• Fentanyl?
• Beating up another kid and throwing him in a trash bin?

Even if you believe that Dr. Gildea did not instruct the school that they could not enforce the order and you believe she did not lie to the District Attorney, don’t you think she should have had a plan in August? Again, it’s an unacceptable action. Either Dr. Gilda did have a plan and it was horrifically executed or she had no plan on how to deal with the inevitability of what happened. Either way, that was her failure.

So, let’s change the subject and speak for a second about the swastika and the N-word underneath a desk in Social Studies professor Josh Goldberg’s class.

Here was Dr. Gildea’s statement on that per KSL:

“By working and learning together, we can strive to eliminate harassment and violence from our schools and our society one lesson, one day, one training at a time. It is through steady steps and actions that we will flourish. Our collective call to action is to move beyond our established policy into a more broad-based national partnership that includes and supports the teacher and staff training to ensure that curriculum delivery context, deep understanding while addressing historical events and literature do occur in a way that sensitive topics and expected outcomes are explicitly described and explained, so that there can be no doubt of the significance and egregious nature of inappropriate words and symbols that can result in disciplinary actions.”

I’m a college-educated person and I’m not sure what the hell she is saying. Here is what she should have said. “There is no place for this hatred in our schools. When we find out who you are, you will face consequences based on school policy 1000. In addition, this incident will be placed into your school records which will impact you when you apply to colleges. If you then take actions to show that you understand why this is so horrible, we will add those to your records too. Any future students who perform similar actions will receive the same outcome. For those students who have been bullied and continue to live in fear of attending our schools tomorrow, trust that those offenders will see the same outcome. We support every student and will take all measures to try and make every child’s experience in Park City Schools a positive experience. We will do our best to make Park City Schools a safe environment for all children.”

According to KSL, Dr. Gildea said there must also be restorative opportunities for students who use inappropriate and hate speech and symbols so they are “able to live in the school environment without malice growing inside of them.”

I get that she is concerned with reforming those who commit the crime. However, I’m more concerned with the students that they are intimidating, impacting, and destroying through their actions than reforming the bastards that commit the crime. I’m not sure Dr. Gildea thinks that way.

I then think back to the past. We have the magic rock that appears wasn’t actually thrown through the Superintendent’s window. This shows a complete lack of logic.

The introduction of Edustaff as an alternative to the previous substitutes has failed. Outsourcing substitutes, when formally a teacher had a trusted list of subs they could depend upon, made things worse. Teachers now have to cover for other teachers who are out and that is impacting our entire school system. That is on Dr. Gildea because it happened on her watch.

The decision to not allow the children of teachers, who live outside the district, to attend our schools automatically made our schools worse. We lost good teachers. That happened under Dr. Gildea, as well.

Finally, the decision to no longer speak to KPCW after they questioned the district’s handling of the mask mandate at Parleys, at best, seems juvenile. At worst it seems like an affront to the free press. I would never expect that from Park City Schools, or want someone who directs that action, to be responsible for teaching my children. As George Orwell said, “Freedom of the Press if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose.” None of us want to be criticized; however, for the school district to no longer speak to KPCW because of their criticism seems petty.

I can almost hear members of the school board bristling at the above commentary. “You just don’t understand!” Perhaps they would tell me that “the lawyers made some of these decisions!” I would be told that I am ignoring the positive outcomes, like the schools generally being in-person for the last two years (that is a success but not enough). They would likely tell me that you can’t solve hate with more hate.

I would hope they understand there is no hate in what I write. I just don’t think Dr. Gildea is getting it done. I’m not impassioned. I just have moderate expectations — which aren’t being fulfilled. Is that crazy?

Park City Schools are still good schools. I believe that is because of the teachers and administrators at our individual schools. I don’t think it goes much further than that.

The truth is that Dr. Gildea’s total compensation in 2021 was $416,929.55. She was not the highest compensated Superintendent in Utah in 2021 — that would go to Martin Bates of the Granite School District who was compensated $579K in 2021. However, Mr. Bates was also retiring, and his compensation reflected that. He also managed 92 schools. Dr. Gildea manages 7.

So, let’s check out the third-place finisher. That would be Alpine School District’s, Samuel Jarman. His total compensation is $349K. He manages 91 schools and 83,000 students. Again, Dr. Gildea manages 7 schools and less than 5,000 students.

How about the Superintendent from the Jordan School District with 63 schools and 57,000 students? That would be Anthony Godfrey checking in at $289K.

Money isn’t everything, but it is an indicator. We are paying rock star prices and getting aging-bands-from-the-70s performances.

Frankly, I hate writing things like this. I don’t want to be the person calling for someone else to lose their job. However, I have been in business long enough to know that we do the entire organization (our schools in this case) a disservice by not calling a spade a spade and moving on.

As a community member and a parent of children in our schools, I can put up with a lot of things. However, I can’t put up with lying. If the emails that KPCW reported on are accurate, it appears that is what happened. There were indicators beforehand, but the alleged lying is the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Is it alright for my child to lie? When they do lie is it OK for them to “justify” themselves out of the lie? Is that what we want to be taught to our children?

So, here we are. What will happen? I have no idea.

If the allegations from KPCW are true, I don’t know how the school board doesn’t make a change. Let’s hope this time they hire a superintendent from within.