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.

Cases of Covid-19 are spiking at Park City High School. Currently, 46 kids have tested positive. Normally, more than 30 students with Covid would trigger what’s called “Test to Stay” at the school. This would mean that all students would need to be tested to continue in-person classes. However, due to the language in the Utah Legislation that created the Test to Stay program, if a student hasn’t been in school for the last 14 days, they aren’t counted. Due to the Christmas break, 29 of the 46 cases aren’t counted versus the Test to Stay threshold at PCHS.

So what we have is an outbreak, that can’t be officially treated as an outbreak, because of legislative rules. However, the Park City School Board, School District, and Health Department need to be treating this as a major issue. Covid cases at the high school are going to blow up; Test To Stay will be triggered. The numbers could be so staggering that the Summit County Health Department will have to put in mandates. There may be so many kids out of school that the district has to make alternate plans for remote education.

Why do I say this? The transmission capability of Omicron and personal experience. I got Covid before Christmas. I am triple vaxxed and likely got Omicron while waiting an hour for takeout, while wearing a mask, at Bombay house in SLC. I tested positive for Covid a couple of days later. My kids took a PCR test and tested negative. A couple of days after that, they tested positive. My story isn’t uncommon.

Whether a high school student tested positive on the morning before classes started, and thus they are not counted in the numbers, is irrelevant. Many high school kids are social and likely have spread this to their friends. Their friends will test negative for a bit and then they will test positive. Between the two tests, they will spread it to others.

I would be remiss if I didn’t state that Omicron seems rather benign for many people. It was for my family. However, public policy is not that nuanced. A positive test is a positive test and that will dictate the actions taken. I would guess we will have 150 positives at PCHS within a week. I wouldn’t be shocked if the number stretched to 300 at some point soon.

The question is what the School Board, School District, and Summit County Health Department are doing about this?

Let’s start with the School Board. I was a little shocked that there wasn’t an emergency meeting being held by the Park City School Board. I would think the board would want to discuss issues they find important, given the fact that the high school will likely move to a Test to Stay paradigm. Also, after the debacle at Parley’s Park earlier this year, I would think the board would want to ask some pointed questions of Superintendent Gildea and the district:

• Have you communicated with the Health Department to ensure there are enough tests (and testing teams) for 1,500 high school students to be tested?
• If there are not enough tests, and the school goes full remote, has the district communicated with teachers and students on how remote learning will work? Have they planned for reaching out to ELL and disadvantaged students to ensure all students are treated equitably.
• How will Test to Stay practically work at the High School? Will it delay start times? How do we keep students safe while waiting for testing?
• For students that choose remote learning, or have to be remote, what plans do we have in place to help hundreds of students continue their learning process?
• Given the numbers at the high school, can we change any procedures to make students safer?
• Given student numbers, what can we do to keep teachers safe?

The board may say, we are on top of it, and emailing back and forth to make sure we are in a good place. The problem with that is that it violates Open Meeting laws. The public has a right to know what policy discussions are taking place in an open forum. So, there needs to be an official meeting.

From the School District and Health Department’s point of view, I think their Test to Start program that is available from 7:15 until 9:15 AM at the High School and Ecker Hill is a great start. However, I can’t find any information on Test to Stay protocols, which are likely going to be needed soon. The only mention is that that “At that time [after thresholds are met], Test to Stay protocols will be distributed to families. Compare this to the Alpine School District where they already clearly define what will happen and have a parental consent system ready.

Maybe that’s because Alpine School District has 89 schools and they take it more seriously. However, you’d think with only 7 schools in the Park City School District, we could have a plan ready and posted.

There is a lack of trust with the Park City School District. I ask myself if at 2 PM this afternoon the district gets word that over 30 students at PCHS, that can be “counted,” have Covid, will they successfully execute Test to Stay tomorrow?

Granted, I am a skeptic, but I don’t think so. I think it will be a mess. I hope they prove me wrong. To do that they will need:

• Top notch communications to the public that explains what is happening and how this works
• Excellent communciations for teachers/staff to explain how this impacts them.
• A process for testing all students quickly and efficiently.
• A mechanism to get parental consent for testing and a way to relay that to the people doing testing.
• A system for recording all data.

They will need all of this on day one. Whether that is today or next week.

Perhaps I am wrong and we won’t cross that threshold requiring Test to Stay at PCHS. However, we already blew past that, except for technicalities. Perhaps the school district and Health Department have table-topped this, so they have a plan in place that will survive the first encounter with students. That would be great and I would love to be wrong. Perhaps, the school district learned from the incident at Parley’s Park and has spent the month of December planning for this.

However, I fear that the district is so intent on making sure schools stay open that they haven’t accounted for, what seems now, the inevitability.

We should know soon enough.

This is a train headed down the track right toward us. I hope the district has got this. If they do, then it will go a ways toward me believing they have things under control. I would conclude that they have learned from the Parley’s Park incident and it engenders more trust.

If not, it’s likely many key school district players won’t politically survive the repercussions.

More information about Test to Stay is available here.