Last night’s County Council meeting was a show of force regarding Dakota Pacific. Over 800 people took time out of their lives to show up in person and on Zoom. Most of the people who spoke were against it. I was one of those.

Yet, I can’t help but think that the show of force was merely a moral victory. Many of those in attendance would think, “How could the County Council vote for Dakota Pacific when almost 4,000 people have signed a petition against it?” Then they would then think, “800 people showed up online and in person against this effort. How could they vote for it?”

I’ve seen it. All it takes is three yeahs. Then it passes way in to the ether and the County Council moves on to the next thing. The project gets built. No one remembers. Everyone votes Democrat whether they like the local politics of the council member or not. The same people are re-elected. Rinse and repeat.

There is no fear in the heart of the County Council that they are going against popular opinion. That’s because they believe they know more than you do. And they probably do. Except for a select few individuals in our community, they have spent way more time on this project than most of us have.

However, it doesn’t make their opinion right.

That said, their opinion will become law.

Our job, for people against Dakota Pacific, is to understand the concerns they have. We need to find the areas where maybe they aren’t so sure and use research, data, and information to change their opinion beyond a reasonable doubt.

What I learned from last night is that the public’s conjecture about water, transit, affordable housing, and traffic means very little to the Council writ large. The County Council has heard all of that for a year and they are still rocketing towards approval. I think we need to pay attention to what they have said and listen to them for once.

At the end of last night’s meeting, Doug Clyde said that he needed to personally validate the traffic studies done. He feels he has enough experience to look at the data and determine whether there will be more or less traffic with Dakota Pacific’s plan. Likewise, he wanted to delve into the details of developer agreement. If you are against Dakota Pacific, you need to convince Mr Clyde that traffic will be worse under Dakota Pacific and point out other holes in the proposal. He has a developer background. You may assume that would work against the Stop Dakota efforts; however, I believe if the right arguments are presented, that are concrete and factual, he could conclude that this development agreement is not what we want at this point and that the traffic studies were not valid.

County Councilor Malena Stevens did not provide any insight last night into her thought process. However, previously she cited affordable housing as a key element. Likewise, Ms. Stevens represents a different demographic on the County Council. I believe she too listens to the facts. If substantial information is brought to light that proves that this will not provide substantial affordable housing benefits, she could be convinced to vote against the project.

Council Chair Glen Wright has focused on sustainability during his tenure. While he did not speak last night,

This week the public won versus Dakota Pacific. Dakota wanted to build something that most people felt was bad for our communty. Most County Councilors were ready to vote for the project until 900 people showed up to vote opposition. The public stopped it.

Yet, now we are moving into the nest phase. We have heard that Friends of Summit County for Sustainable Development (Friends), the major opposition force to Dakota, is talking about working with Dakota Pacific to find solutions “that that people want.”

What The Friends need to understand are two fold. First, it is far easier in Summit County to oppose something than to finda plan that is better than. So, as they supposedly represent what Snyderviulle Basin residents want, they may find they know what we are against but they don’t know what we are for. So, I would encourage the group to find a way to understand what the community wants… not just what they don’t want.

More importantly, Friends, please don’t fall into the Hubris Trap. The standard play from development organizations, that fail like Dakota, is to bring you into the discussion and make you feel honored to be in the discussion. They make you feel like you have a voice. They then give you a little bit. For instance, they give you an extra 100 affordable locations but all the problems still exist. Yet, because you’ve met with them 5 times, and they gave you something, it is hard to say no. Now, it is your solution and how do you rally against it?

We need to slow down Dakota Pacific. We, as a community, need to change the Snyderville Basin General Plan to meet our current community. We likely need to change our neighborhood plans to fit our current demographic. That is years of work.

Sometimes I feel like I am living in the movie Zoolander. I am sitting in disbelief, looking around, and shouting, “Am I taking crazy pills?”

Test to Stay at schools is canceled because we don’t have enough tests and we should assume everyone has been exposed to Covid. I imagine Yogi Berra saying, “We have so many people with Covid that we don’t need to test anymore.”

The Governor says most people should give up on testing.

The State epidemiologist Dr. Leisha Nolen says if you feel sick assume you have Covid because so many people do.

For two weeks, when someone in a classroom comes down with Covid, the Park City School District has been sending out letters to everyone in a class telling them to assume they were exposed. There is no more close contact.

Everyone had Covid.

The problem with this is consistency. It appears the state of Utah has moved past trying to do the right thing anddoing everything they can to stop covid,

Wednesday the Park City School Board met in a morning meeting to discuss staffing needs at Park City Schools. The bottom line is that there are not enough teachers and there are not enough substitutes. Human Resources Director Shad Sorenson offered potential solutions that included limiting meetings and free food. As he spoke, I couldn’t help but think that he was describing Google in 2010.

It’s no longer 2010 and Park City isn’t the Google campus. Having worked in that sort of environment, I can’t claim that Mr. Sorenson is completely wrong, but I do know that the benefits of that environment last about 3 weeks.

Here are the facts.

There is no short-term solution. Creating a culture that makes talent want to work for you takes years. Whatever we do today won’t be felt for 3 to 5 years or more.

The issue, at the beginning of the year, where out-of-district teachers’ kids were no longer granted the ability to go to our schools was horrible at the time. Now, that decision is severely harming our schools. It’s not a good culture.

Likewise, they say we don’t have enough substitutes. Yet, within the last two years, we outsourced our substitutes to EDUStaff in Michigan. Previously, a teacher might have reached out to a trusted substitute who would come in and take their place. It didn’t always work perfectly but it generally worked. Now, we are looking at our temp agency. It’s not working. Better stated, it’s working worse. Again, it’s not a good culture.

During the meeting school board member Andrew Caplan said, “we need to change the model… we need to look at this differently.” He cited subtitute teachers who are being paid $17 who could make more at Smiths stocking shelves. He’s right.

I don’t believe keeping good teachers is about free food or installing video games in the teachers’ lounge. It’s much simpler and also much harder than that.

It’s about a good culture. It’s about trust.

Are you comfortable with this symbol in our schools?

Should the lessons from the hatred it represents be taught? Yes so we can all get better. Should we accept when our children create these symbols in our schools? No.

As a member of the Park City community, I am appalled that an individual put hateful speech on a desk at Park City High School. It is horrible. It’s not who we want to be. However, I also understand that children are stupid. I was. You were. We all make mistakes and we learn from our stupidity. Hopefully.

So, I hope that whoever did this realizes that all of us… every race…every religion…every ethnicity… every color … every human… we’re all in this together. We all live and then we all die. How we treat the time in-between is what matters. Crap like what happened at the high school, at its minimum, divides us. At its worst It is hurtful and brings us all down. Either way, it does no good.

Later that day, I watched the Park City School Board meeting where teacher Josh Goldstein arose, during a public comment session, to speak about the anti-semitic language found under a desk in his class. He then spoke about 60 emails he received where people told him about other instances of racism and bigotry people in our community had faced.

It appears it was not one instance of a swastika under a desk …. but many cases.

I then thought back to my childrens’ experience at Jeremy Ranch elementary. They talk about how the N-word was used by their classmates. I’ll go a step further because I think we are at a point where using terms like “N-Word” sugar-coats it and doesn’t bring the significance it should. So, let’s get real. My kids talk about how the word NIGGER is used at Jermery Ranch Elementary School. Yes, in 2022 the term NIGGER is still found in Park City on our playgrounds. I’m glad the ED foundation raises millions but this seems like a bigger issue, at least to me.

Anyhow, back to the Nazi-related story in Park City schools. We had a swastika drawn on a desk and the word NIGGER written as well.

In order to conduct a fair and equitable survey with ample opportunity to explore both positive and negative feedback on a wide variety of PCSD topics that affect employees, we worked closely with an outside firm. To encourage participation, this survey was not issued by or through PCSD’s District Office and all participants remained anonymous. 

Out of 431 PCSD employees emailed (those publicly available through PCSD minus

those emails returned as ‘undeliverable’), we had 79 respondents. This external survey had an 18 percent return rate. This rate is below the desired response rate for an employee satisfaction survey. However, within hours of survey delivery to employees, the PCSD District Office and Principals issued emails to employees discouraging participation, including such language as: ‘I wanted to let you know that you may have received an email to complete a survey from ’, Please ignore the email at this time. I am not sure where the email is coming from or where the data from the survey is going.’, which we believe had significant impact.

Mary Morgan:

Teachers appreciative of last week workday
Dr Hunt is leaving and would like to see an equity director or part of CAO
UEA not part of PC Stakeholders survey creation
Has been divide and we need to work together

Claustina

• Coalition for Safe, supportive schools
• Equity task force has been reunited
• Inspire and support all students
• Ensure safety for everyone in buildings

Last week Mandy Pomeroy was appointed to the Park City School Board to fulfill the remainder of Kara Hendrickson’s term. Three people applied for the appointment: EJ Elliott, Mandy Pomeroy, and Carlos Villar. Meredith Reed and Josh Mann (that would be me, the founder of Park Rag) opted not to apply. Meredith and I have received a number of questions about why we didn’t want to be appointed and questions about whether we are still running for the school board (we are).

I wanted to take a few minutes and explain why we didn’t want to be appointed and why the Park City School Board should not have appointed Mandy Pomeroy.

Upon the resignation and unfortunate passing of Kara Hendrickson, Meredith Reed contacted me and Ms. Pomeroy and proposed that none of us apply for the school board vacancy. Her reasoning was sound. She noted that three of the current four school board members began their tenure by being appointed. She further stated that she didn’t believe an appointment served the democratic process. She felt the voters should decide the outcome without undue influence. She was 100% right and I agreed not to apply.

Mandy Pomeroy disagreed and applied for the position. Furthermore, Ms. Pomeroy wrote an editorial to the Park Record and concluded, “I respectfully disagree with candidates Mann and Reed, and I encourage them to do their homework, or at the very least, a quick Google search.” I would encourage you to read the entire Letter to the Editor. That was the second time Ms. Pomeroy had told Meredith and me to “Google it.”

I just shake my head because the whole response is so condescending. It wreaks of the complaints we often hear about current board members when they address the community. So, perhaps, she would fit right in. That’s a problem.

Yet, that’s not why I say the school board appointed the wrong candidate.

However, I first want to explain why I believe an appointment doesn’t serve the democratic process. Now, more than ever, we need to have big discussions about the future of our schools. Our schools aparently had a “communication” issue when they didn’t follow Summit Couty’s law when enforcing masks. Regardless of how we feel about masks, I would guess most of us feel our school district should follow laws. Then a swastika and a racial slur were found under a desk of a Jewish teacher at the High School. The School Board was quick to note that three of the board members were Jewish; however, teacher Josh Goldberg said, “I’ve got children coming to me talking about rape culture, talking about hatred that they’ve endure and sometimes for years and we need to make a major change.” We have the ongoing investigation of at least two cases of rape at our schools and one case of child abuse that were not reported.

So, we have an issue with our district leadership. Yet, they appointed a candidate that will serve on the board for 8 months. You may say, “yes, but that doesn’t impact the election in June or November.” But it does. In a study of all statewide races in 2020, local-level incumbents won 89% of the time. Nine out of ten times they won. By appointing Ms. Pomeroy, the school board made her an incumbent and by default gave her the endorsement for the position.

Ms Pomeroy’s argument so far is that someone had to be appointed by law. That is true. However, she wasn’t the one that should have been appointed.

Thanks to those who came to Jeremy Ranch Elementary to talk schools this afternoon. I learned a lot, so thank you.

One of the topics that came up was Park City Superintendent Dr. Gildea. Discussions stretched from her $415K total compensation, to decisions she has made, to how she manages, and further. It was a good discussion with points both for her and against her.

We don’t need to get into the details here, as we all know… each of us have strengths and weaknesses. However, one gentleman asked what the role of the superintendent is. It’s an interesting question.My response was that they are the CEO. They manage all the essential parts of the school. He or she doesn’t do the accounting, HR, logistics planning, or any other direct job but they manage, and are responsible for how it ultimately works out.

After discussions like that I like to go home and better understand research around the topic. In this case I found an informative, and a surprising study from the Brookings Institute. They are an apolitical and well respected think tank.

So, according to their studies, how important is a school superintendent? Not very important when it comes to student outcomes. That’s surprising. They are the highest paid employee in most school districts. They are in charge. We give them props for all the successes and we rake them over the coals for each failure.

However, the Brookings institute study concluded five things:

• The typical superintendent has been in the job for three to four years.
• Student achievement does not improve with longevity of superintendent service within their districts.
• Hiring a superintendent is not associated with higher student achievement.
• The percentage of the variance in student achievement (a measure of the differences among individual students in test scores) that is associated with superintendents is smaller than that associated with any and all other major components of the education system.
• Superintendents who have an exceptional impact on student achievement cannot be reliably identified.

What the study indicates is that superintendents don’t quantitatively impact the success of our children. Further more, if you desired a rock-star superintendent that may make a difference, you’re unlikely to identify them in a placement search.

My take away from all of this is that it is likely Dr Gildea will be moving on from the Park City School district soon due to average tenure or failure due to our crises. A competent school board would seriously question renewing the contract of a superintendent who allegedly did not follow the law regarding mask mandates, had swastikas on desks that basically went unanswered, and had unreported cases of child abuse. She is also in that four year range of turnover.

Question for next.