Remember when Vail said you would probably be able to ski whenever you wanted. Turns out that’s not true.
Opening day for PCMR and Canyons is tomorrow (11/20). Covid-times has turned what is usually an exciting time into a time of anxiety for many people. However, in many respects, it is a miracle we will have a ski season at all.
Enter Vail’s reservation system for Park City Mountain Resort. No longer can you just show up and ski with your Epic Pass. You need to make a reservation. When this was announced in late summer, people worried about whether this would impinge upon their ability to ski or ride.
However, Vail showed confidence and told us locals that we didn’t need to worry. The reservation system was really for those peak times like Christmas week and President’s Day. The Park Record posted an article about the reservations system and ran quotes from PCMR saying, “But we want to remind people that there is no need to worry or rush to reserve your days. Reservations are exclusive to pass holders through Dec. 7 and for the vast majority of days this season, we believe everyone who wants to ski or ride at one of our resorts will be able to.” They continued, “For the vast majority of days this season, we believe everyone who wants to ski or ride at one of our resorts will be able to…”
So, reservations began yesterday at 2PM. I logged in at 2:04 and was greeted with the message that I was 50,000th in line (that’s across Colorado resorts as well). I was able to get a Saturday reservation for the family at PCMR. However, then reports started rolling in that by early evening the only day available to ski was Tuesday. As of now, there are no days available to ski at PCMR in the next week (the reservation period that Vail uses).
This is likely due to a lack of snow and only a few runs being open. It’s also likely due to the extreme number of passes being sold. In recent memory, I know opening day at PCMR is busy, but I don’t remember Thanksgiving week being particularly crowded.
What I hope is that this isn’t a harbinger of things to come. If you have to log in between 2PM and 3PM on every Wednesday and then wait for an hour in line to try and reserve a space, that will be miserable. God help your chances if you aren’t fortunate enough to be working around a computer.
Likewise, if every day has maxed out Vail’s numbers, what are those lift lines going to look like? What’s the experience on the mountain going to look like? IS DV going to look any differently?
Regardless, if you really want to ski the week after Thanksgiving, I’d be in Vail’s Waiting Room at 1:59 PM on Thanksgiving Eve. If you try hard enough, you may get to ski if you really want to.
in Election
Don’t worry that the Clerk’s office is quarantined, your vote doesn’t matter anyhow
Welcome to the night before election day. I’m sure many of you are excited that tomorrow is the beginning of the end of Trump’s reign. Somewhere in that wish is a caution to be careful what you wish for, but tonight isn’t the time for that.
We’ve been notified that the Summit County Clerk’s office has been shut down due to quarantine and votes may not be counted until mid-November. So, tomorrow’s the Election-bowl of the century and the Clerk’s office (the people who count the votes) evidently didn’t take the precautions to ensure they could play the game.
The clerk’s office is shuttered until November 9 at the earliest. Your vote will be counted by Mid-November.
Are you upset and what’s your recourse?
The good news is that unless you are in School District #2, where school board president Andrew Caplan is defending his seat against Thomas Cooke, you really don’t have much to vote for — unless some random judge is your uncle.
The sad thing about Summit County is that in local elections no one except for Cooke is challenging the incumbent.
So, don’t let the incomprehensible, Covid-19 action from the Summit County Clerk’s office get you down. Whether your vote is counted this year or later, it won’t really matter. All the Summit County Council candidates running unopposed will get reelected. The Assessor, running unopposed, will get reelected. The Recorder, running unopposed, will get reelected. The Treasurer, running unopposed, will get reelected.
Then, when the Clerk runs in two years, you’ll vote for him again, because no one will run against the Democrat.
Our collective actions aren’t getting the best result for Park City or Summit County. We need to find a way to have options when voting. If not, why vote at all?
in Schools
Park City School District enrollment was down again this year
As we entered the 2020-pandemic-school-year, fear was palpable. If you had a kid in school, you probably worried about how they would social distance. Then we heard word from some teachers that their classes were packed. We heard there were more than 700 new kids at Park City Schools this year! It was going to be the end of the world!!
But the world did not end.
We learned that according to October 1 enrollment numbers, including both remote and in-person students, Park City had 69 fewer kids in our school district this year than last.
According to PCSD Superintendent, Jill Gidea, during the most recent School Board Meeting, Park City had 4,696 students enrolled in K-12.
Here is the tally:
Kindergarten: 244
1st: 311
2nd: 298
3rd: 320
4th: 335
5th: 356
6th: 402
7th: 364
8th: 414
9th: 404
10th: 419
11th: 422
12th: 407
Total: 4,696
This compares with 4,765 students enrolled on October 1, 2019. So, we went down by 69 students this year.
From a Covid perspective, this flies in the face of what we have been hearing. People are moving here in droves. So, why are our schools not burgeoning at the seams?
- I hear people talking about the district not being truthful, but I don’t think the district is intentionally lowering numbers. They get state money for every kid. So, they would want to be biased to the upside — not the downside on enrollment.
- Perhaps, the people buying houses don’t have kids. That would fit with the most-recent second homeowner stats where 2/3 of houses in PC and 1/3 of houses in the basin are second homes. Maybe the people moving in are older and looking for a respite fro the city.
- Perhaps the families moving in are keeping their kids in remote-learning at their original schools in California, Texas, etc.
- Perhaps Park City Day School and Judge are getting all the kids because the parents are used to paying for private school and Park City rankings aren’t so hot any more.
I don’t know what the reason is. But it is what it is. For now, in what seems like the largest inward migration of people to Park City since the silver rush of 1892, our schools have gone down in population. Again, the numbers include students doing remote-learning.
That said, Covid-19 is a transitory event. It too shall pass. So, let’s look at these enrollment numbers in context and figure out what they mean for us going forward. There was a time when enrollment in Park City Schools was going up. It appears that time has passed — for now.
In the numbers above, look at the number of students in 7th through 12th grade. That average number of students is 403 per grade. Look at the number of students in grades 1st through 6th. That average is 337. The difference between the two is 16%. That percentage difference will only become bigger unless we get an influx in younger grades.
To put it differently, the 12th grade has almost 100 more kids than the 1st grade has in it (25% more kids). If trends continue, the lower number of students in younger grades will eventually lead to fewer students throughout the system. If we took the current 1st through 4th grade class and compared it to the current number of high school kids (assuming 9th-12th grade) it would be 1,264 versus the 1,649 that are enrolled now. That’s almost a 25% drop.
Why is that? It’s most likely that most families with a child or two can’t afford a $1.5 million house. People who can put $300,000 down are few and far between, and when you have kids, that only becomes harder.
This has broad implications for what the district is planning with capital projects. In 2015 a $56 million bond failed. Now the Park City School Board has given the district the ability to tax residents without a bond for capital improvements. I’ve heard numbers upwards of $150 million to $200 million to tear down Treasure Mountain Junior High, expand the high school for 9th grade and expand Ecker Hill for 8th grade.
It’s a strange course of action when numbers are falling like this. We’ll have to ultimately see what the school district does, but it seems unconscionable if they don’t put a hundreds-of-million-dollar-expenditure out to the people for a vote in the face of this.
I think most of us would agree that some form of capital expenditure makes sense — like bringing the 9th grade into Park City High. We do want to provide a good education for our children.
However, if our hand isn’t forced by growth, and we want to spend money, aren’t there better places to put some of that money? Like teachers or internet for kids who don’t have it or after school programs or technology or helping our ELL students.
Imagine finding a way to take some of those hundreds of millions of tax dollars being proposed for buildings and funneling some of that to help our Park City schools have better than a 36% proficiency rate in math.
The truth is that the school district is not growing. Great. Let’s refocus and get better.
20 Minutes with Andrew Caplan, Park City School board candidate
On Thursday, I had the chance to speak with Andrew Caplan and Thomas Cooke, who are competing for Park City School Board District #2. If you are in District #2, you can either vote for either candidate. If you don’t know if you are in District #2, here is a map.
This is the discussion with Andrew. It was highly informative and I learned a lot. Hopefully, you’ll find it engaging as well.
Most of the questions were sourced from Park Rag readers. Thank you! I tried to keep the discussion close to twenty minutes (although this went over thirty), so I was only able to get to a handful of the 50 questions people had. However, I think we had a good discussion that touched on the essence of many readers’ questions.
Please note, I debated whether to enable comments on this and Thomas’s discussion. Politics is nasty in general. Likewise, we are starting to get people personally attacking others on the Park Rag. That’s not what I want here.
So, please add to the conversation and the discussion. Please praise and attack ideas and not people. It’s hard to run for public office and we don’t need to frighten the best people away from upcoming elections. As usual, I will moderate the comments to make sure they add to the discussion and deal with ideas and not people.
We’re all in this together. On to Park City School Board President Andrew Caplan…
20 Minutes with Thomas Cooke, Park City School board candidate
On Thursday, I had the chance to speak with Thomas Cooke and Andrew Caplan, who are competing for Park City School Board District #2. If you are in District #2, you can either vote for either candidate. If you don’t know if you are in District #2, here is a map.
This is the discussion with Thomas. He is running as a write-in candidate – which long time readers will know that I have a fondness for. Thomas covers topics from how his Planning Commission time will help him on the school board to him raising questions about transparency.
Most of the questions were sourced from Park Rag readers. Thank you! I tried to keep the discussion close to twenty minutes (although this one went 32 minutes), so I was only able to get to a handful of the 50 questions people had. Please know that the Zoom Gods did not favor Thomas and me on Thursday morning. Some of the video is a little choppy (another downside of living in a COVID world), but the audio is great, so you won’t miss a thing.
Please note, I debated whether to enable comments on this and Andrew’s discussion. Politics is nasty in general. Likewise, we are starting to get people personally attacking others on the Park Rag. That’s not what I want here.
So, please add to the conversation and the discussion. Please praise and attack ideas and not people. It’s hard to run for public office and we don’t need to frighten the best people away from upcoming elections. As usual, I will moderate the comments to make sure they add to the discussion and deal with ideas and not people.
We’re all in this together. On to write in candidate Thomas Cooke…
Park City School District needs to provide Covid-19 numbers daily
I’ve generally felt that the Park City School District (PCSD) has done the best job they can of managing back-to-school in a Corona world. There are a lot of moving parts, people, directives, orders, and government organizations that are all interacting to dictate the path forward in our schools. It’s not perfect, but there has not been one day where I worried about sending my kids to elementary school.
Part of that is that the PCSD was providing daily updates on cases at each of our schools. As a parent, it gives you a feel for how it is going. Unfortunately, yesterday that stopped. It appears they have reverted to updating cases weekly. So, the next update comes this Friday.
That change comes at a bad time. Summit County Covid-19 numbers are jumping. We used to have a case or two per day — sometimes five. Now it seems we are way up. Eighteen yesterday. Twenty the day before. Ten the day before that. The trend ain’t our friend.
I only imagine that as we head into winter it will only become worse.
Not having daily numbers from the school district causes a few problems. First, parents have a right to know. I was talking with a friend last night about the change and his point was, “I need to know the situation so I can make the best decisions for my family.” Imagine that you are living in a multi-generational household, with children, parents, grandparents, etc. It would be helpful to know the risk at your child’s school. You could make a decision to keep your child in-person or shift them to the remote option to protect the grandparents and great-grandparents.
Second, in an absence of information, rumors flourish. For instance, I have heard members of local sports teams are going remote, so they aren’t subject to quarantine rules, so players can play. I’ve heard that the dates associated with the student being eligible for coming back to school have been “hidden” to mask the actual numbers so the school can remain in-person. Almost weekly, one of my kid reports on the number of children who aren’t in their class and say “they probably have Corona Virus.”
Is any of that true? I don’t know. However, I do know that in the absence of order there is disorder.
It’s not a failure if we need to go remote for a period. It is what it is. We are in a pandemic.
PCSD, do what you do. You teach. Teach the kids. Teach the parents. Provide information. It will be far better off from a public perspective if we inch up to 15 cases at a school, publish the stats, and we eventually close, versus coming out of the left field. If we are inching that way, then parents know they need to adjust work schedules for the inevitable. If you tell the parents the day before, then it severely impacts the community. What about their jobs? How does the family cope? The school district will be negatively impacting families.
PCSD, please publish the data you get daily, and then we are all in the same boat. We can figure it out together. I know many people who have come here recently don’t believe it, but this is still a small town that often waves to each other, smiles, and is friendly.
Of course, some people will complain. They always do. But the school district needs to do the right thing.
By publishing daily information on Covid-19 cases by school, parents, teachers, and other administrators can make decisions.
Park City School District, if you doubt that daily numbers are best, just imagine that during some random evening in November you get a call from the Summit County Health Department saying you are closed down. Imagine the backlash you are going to get with providing teachers and parents with 8 hours of notice that a school is remote. Imagine the impact to teachers trying to figure out what they will do remotely, tomorrow. Imagine the impact to families. It will be a sh*t show that takes away many days from education.
Instead, imagine that daily numbers are provided and people can prepare for the event as we near it. They see we are approaching the 15 student threshold and plan for the inevitable. It won’t be perfect but it is literally the best we can do.
In the long-run, being open and honest, will work out better for everyone.
in Schools
Do you have a question for the Park City School Board Candidates?
There is one contested race for the Park City School Board. Write-in candidate Thomas Cooke is challenging incumbent Andrew Caplan for seat #2.
Both Thomas and Andrew have agreed to do casual video interviews via the Park Rag. My goal is to provide voters with as much information as possible to make informed decisions.
The School Board is one of the most neglected positions in local government. Most people just don’t seem to care. Yet, if you have children in the district, this may be one of the most important decisions you can make. If you don’t, get out your property tax statement, you’ll see that the Park City School District is where a lot of your money goes.
With that in mind, I’d love to hear the general themes and questions you’d like me to ask the candidates. I don’t promise to ask every question. Likewise, any questions you submit in the comments below should be respectful. Tough questions are OK, but treat Andrew and Thomas like you would want to be treated. It is not easy to run for local office and/or serve the community. We need to appreciate those that do.
So, if you have a question, please post it in the comments below by Wednesday night. We can all make a difference if we work together.
Should Park City school quarantines be shortened?
Today I received an email from the Park City School District asking whether quarantines should be shortened. Currently, if your kid (or a teacher) is in close proximity to a person who has tested positive for Covid-19, then they can’t return to school for 14 days. According to the school district, there are about 200 students at PCHS who are in quarantine.
According to the email from the district, “The Summit County Health Department (SCHD) has stated, at this time, it is appropriate for school districts in Summit County to consider moving to a shortened quarantine if COVID-19 cases are not prevalent or increasing in the district.” So, likely due to pressure from parents, the district is asking whether the public wants the quarantine shortened.
To me, this question seems political in nature. If Rich Bullough at the Sumit County Health Department says its Ok, then do it. If not, then don’t. Trust the science. Put it on the Summit County Health Department to stake their reputation on it. Don’t send a survey.
But, since the school district seems to want to go down the Survey Monkey route, I’ll go there. Let’s think about whether we should allow students to return to school, after seven days, if they take a Covid-19 test, and it is negative.
I get it. Imagine your kid’s been in contact with someone who tested positive for the CoronaVirus, your child shows no symptoms, and she has to stay home. It has to be frustrating.
The district is proposing that if after 7 days, your quarantined-kid tests negative for the virus, then they can come back to school. At face value, it makes sense to me. They tested negative, so why not let them back in. Trust me, I would be preaching from that hymnal if/when my kid comes down with this. However, there are three problems, no matter how much I want to want this.
- The CDC still says that it can take up to 14 days for the virus to be detectable. I tried to find research that says if someone was infected, you were in close proximity to them, and then you tested negative after 7 days, everything was fine. I couldn’t. If you, the intrepid Park Rag reader, can point me to a study saying 7 days is cool, then that may make me think this is an OK idea.
- Summit County still requires a quarantine of 14 days across the board. I have not seen a rule change on this. Therefore, if you work in a restaurant, and are in the same predicament, why should a kid be able to go to school and you can’t go to work. It doesn’t make sense. It needs to be aligned. It needs to be concrete. If a student can go back after seven days, everyone can go back after seven days (with the appropriate test).
- I, as a middle-class Parkite, whose wife works in the medical industry, will be able to get this “7-day” test through insurance or we’ll be able to afford it. Can everyone? If someone is not as fortunate as me, is the health department (or school district) guaranteeing a free test for re-admittance to school? If not, is it fair that kids with more money can go back to school and the less fortunate can’t? No, it is not. It has to be equitable.
Fourteen days is a long time off of school. That not only hurts the student but also his or her family that may have to take off work to take care of them. So, an approach that shortens that time makes sense. However, that approach needs to be universal to everyone in our community (not just students). It needs to be backed by scientific research saying that a test after seven days guarantees the student doesn’t have the virus. It also needs to be available for free to all students and all individuals who work in our community.
Perhaps, all of those things are in place and the research backs this up. Great. Let’s go for it.
If not, this idea is a non-starter.
If you want to participate, here is a link to the survey. If you received the survey via email, keep in mind that the link they sent you has an email tracker in it. So, while I’m not certain of it, it is likely someone at the district would know how you voted. So, be careful out there. The link above has that removed and therefore, the vote won’t be associated with your email address.
Park City School District Covid-19 numbers are no longer available from the district
Update: It looks like as of 10:50 AM the numbers are back online.
We heard from the Superintendent’s office that they were editing the spreadsheet for a couple of hours and that can take it offline.
Thanks, PCSD for getting this back up and running. Many people in our community find this information extremely useful.
A number of people seem to be coming to the Park Rag for our easy to access PCSD Covid numbers. Unfortunately this morning the Google Docs Spreadsheet that we link to is no longer accessible.
We’ve reached out to the district to understand whether this is intentional or whether they may be updating their systems. It could be because the state is now reporting them. That would be unfortunate because the state’s numbers are incorrect. The state reports less than 5 active cases and we know from yesterday’s number (13 total on PCSD website versus <5 on the state’s).
We’ll update when/if we hear back from the Superintendent’s office.
in Skiing
Vail season pass sales volume is up 18%. What time will I have to get to the PCMR lot by?
Today, Vail announced its quarterly earnings. They did worse than expected. So, if you own the stock, you aren’t happy right now.
However, if you are a Parkite with an Epic pass, you may be even unhappier. Season pass sales, by the number of passes, was UP 18% over last year through September 18th. By straight dollars, sales were down 4%. However, if you account for the credits from last year, sales were up 24%.
So, 18% more passes were sold. Maybe those purchases were by people in Colorado. Maybe Vail’s slope in Kansas City has become a hot commodity. They don’t announce sales by region, so we don’t know the regions driving the sales. However, my bet is a healthy number of those sales were in Utah. If the levels seen on our trails this summer are any indication, it’s likely people are itching to hit the slopes come December.
Well, an old adage is “if it’s good for Vail, it’s good for Park City.” Or at least I imagine someone has said that. We’ll see.
I’ll look forward to seeing you at the PCMR parking lot at 7:30 AM — so we both can vie for the last spot.
Parkrag
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