Hopefully you read Bubba Brown’s excellent article in the Park Record on the student who was discriminated against by the Park City School District. If you haven’t, I would recommend you do that now.

The article basically talks about an investigation by the federal government that pointed to school district personnel discriminating against a kindergarten student who has type 1 diabetes. The student was not always provided care by our schools as required by law and was not allowed to participate equally in some activities.

Well, that excellent article by Mr Brown has been picked up by the Associated Press. It has now gone far and wide. I’m sure the school district isn’t exactly happy with that. I also bet those people who feel our precariously balanced tourism business could be disrupted by any negative news flow are equally non-plussed. Finally, I’m sure real estate agents advertising in the WSJ and Miami Hearld can’t be happy, either. There’s nothing like a little tarnish showing up on our gem of a town.

Personally, I’m glad the Associated Press picked up the article. It’s a story that must be told.

We had a chance to sit down with the mother of the student last week and hope to provide our view early next week.

In the meantime, here is a compilation of a Google Search that shows how far this story has gone:

Each Friday, Park City School Superintendent Ember Conley meets with the public to discuss issues and answer questions. This week’s discussion focused on the school threat from May 3rd.

I’ve tried to capture questions from the public and responses from district personnel below. Please forgive spelling mistakes and grammar issues as I tried to capture this in real time.

If you have questions, please feel free to post them in the comments.

Citizen:How would you have handled the security situation differently? How will you handle it differently?

Dr Conley:

1. Internally communicate
2. Pulling in people at the right time
3. Publicly apologize for content of email but given the amount of public outcry it was the right time
4. We have 1000 people who have opted out of emails… how can we get them back on system. How can we work with Summit COunty to use the systems they have
5. in the safety situations… this one was not situation that would put our students at risk
6. Emergency plan…
7. Also need to help community understand mental illness… Bob at high school and Emily at TMJH… the number of suicide referrals is huge. Its not a school issue but a community issue. We need to look at our crisis plan. Mental health awareness.

Citizen: What decisions have been made for what the thresholds have been made on who and what to communicate? How do you decide when to share with the community?

Dr Conley:

1. Had critical conversations internally with our team
2. Have to be careful about what we share.
3. We are ot responsible for only the people within our organization but the entire organization

Wade Carpenter (Park City Police Chief):

1. We continually evaluate threats and what we feel is pertinent and germane for public safety. If I thought is was a legitimate threat we would have closed the schools down. This situation was interesting because the situation was dealt with in October. However, the individual was isolated. The longer they sit, the larger chance the person will act out. So, we need to look at it on a case by case basis and decide how to handle it. So, when we look at these situations, we need to look at how we get them assimilated. When they are coming back to the school we have the ability to set the rules (i.e., search them and have someone present with them). I would rather know where the individual is versus not know where they are. I honestly feel like we in Park City are better than how we acted in this situation. This is school, police, and parents… we all could have acted better. A learning piece is that if something like this is going out, we have to have communication between school and police department before the email goes out. The secondary piece is the communication piece that we have to fix.

Citizen: I understand this may have been a learning experience. However, what we want to know is if someone will be held accountable for these types of problems. If something like this happens again, will someone be held accountable?

Dr Conley: I will be held accountable.

Citizen: We are still left wondering if our kids are safe. Why wasn’t the security issue communicated on October?

Dr Conley:

1. In October the child wasn’t a student… We worked through police department
2. It didn’t effect our school system because the situation was handled.
   

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Citizen: Some information could have been shared. Couldn’t you have told us about threat or the plan?

Dr Conley: We have a safety plan and safety team that dictates our process.

Citizen: Is that something that is publicly available?

1. Wade: No, we can’t share that because it is private information. We can’t share it for security reasons.

Citizen: Isn’t there parts of the plan like communications that could be published?

Molly Miller (School District): Yes. There is a crisis checklist. Email is down currently in the district. We will get that on the website. We will publish that going forward.

Julie Booth (County Communications): I would recommend that you alert the parents with a placeholder email that says “we are coming out with an email later” and that gives you time to craft the email you want.

Dr Conley: Thank you for that. That is a good idea. What people have to understand is that we have competent people in our district. We have good people handling these types of issues,

Wade Carpenter: [To people in attendance] Would you prefer multiple sources of information like using the district phone system (in addition to facebook, email, etc.) or would you prefer a single method? It’s hard to put out a mass email and have social media take over.

Dr Conley: The district is putting together certain places where you can get information.

Molly: information will be emailed, posted to social media, text messages, robo call. If there is any other form of communication, let me know. We will try to put specifics in when we can.

Citizen: Bob (O’Connor Principal), in hindsight, did you have an awareness of more concern. Did you get the sense that this was going to rev up a little more than usual?

Bob: Perhaps. I wish the parents would have come to me versus spreading it out throughout the community. The parents I talked with a few weeks before I felt everything was OK.

Citizen: That is why I ask… if something was brewing ahead of time could the timing have been different.

Bob: I’ll take responsibility for that. The Assistant Principal and I talked about creating a communication plan but decided not to do anything because I didn’t want to fuel the fire.

Wade: I was talking with Amanda Dixon from KSL. She said, every 13 days, because of media continuing talking about active shooters, it leads to another one. She says that is what the studies say. When these things spin up, attention is given to it… so it is important that we moderate ourselves to not contribute to the issue and make things worse.

Citizen: Do you feel faster communication would have helped and reduced the social media impacts?

Wade Carpenter: It depends on what the communication levels you want.

Citizen: Sometimes for fun we read the Park Record. There are so many police reports of dumb stuff. Maybe we need to see how many dumb things happen in schools. Maybe that will lead us to learn what we really need to react to. If we get blindsided at 10PM at night, hearing vague emails, that’s when we go wonky. So, just over expose us.

Wade Carpenter: That’s similar to when we put signs up in the community. You get so inundated with signs… so we put signs in so conspicuous of an area that people have to notice.

Citizen: We as citizens need to have the opportunity to see it all and then at least we know everything. If it’s always transparent it is good. We need the info. Barrage us with information.

Wade: I disagree to that. It comes back to the media threat. I think it puts ideas in there heads of other things that happen. The data says that. Kids start thinking about these thing.

Citizen: I agree email may not be right… how about putting on the website.

Dr Conley: Our job is to educate and not blog about what is happening.

Dr Conley: We have a family that is dealing with a child that is dealing with mental illness. They are now being ostracized. I am done. I apologized for the email but we are done. Our community needs to help our kids. You want to put your energy and resources toward something. Put it toward our kids. Give us mental health resources.

Petra Butler (running for school board): If we want to help our kids, we need mental health resources. We have 2 psychologists. We need to come together to talk about these issues. Many of these issues are because our kids need help. We need to get kids the resources they need. We need to stop these kids from failing.

Citizen: What can we do as a district to help that?

Dr Conley: We are adding resources. Nurses, counselors, etc. But we need specific counselors who can deal with it from the early years. There is always the chance to do truth in taxation to get a counselor in every school.

Citizen: Could PC Ed fund it?

Dr Conley: We had a group of parents come together to get gifted specialist in very school.

Andrew Kaplan (running for school board): I’ll speak for PC ED foundation. The majority of our funds are from donations, so we could probably do that.

Citizen: When you talk in turn of tax levy…it would be there every year. If this was PC Ed funded, I would want to make sure that the funding is there every year.

Citizen: I think there has been too much publicity on the subject. When I was in high school, I got the crap beat out of me. The kid who did it was proud of it. It was on the front page of the paper. It has an ill effect on the kids. I’ll give you an example… the dual immersion kids read the paper in french about the attacks in parents. They were freaked out. There was too much awareness. I try to tell my grand kids that there are crazies everywhere. I try to explain it that teachers, police and others are there to help. I think from a kid’s perspective there is too much information.

Wade Carpenter: I was running a drug unit and we fed the media gang info all the time. A kid was shot in the head and all he cared about was the publicity he was going to get from getting shot. So, we changed that and restricted information. There is a time and a place for media.

Treasure Mountain Junior High Representative: We have a safety plan in place and we are constantly working for safety. This year we had a situation where we needed law enforcement. In three minutes, police were there. Within 10 minutes, tri county law enforcement was there. It was a very random situation… which is usually how it goes. I can’t stand in front of you and say we are 100% full proof but we are doing our best.

Frank Smith (Sheriff’s Department): At 3AM we had SWAT team in place because when things get this spun up, you never know where something may happen. We have tactical plans in place for every school including Utah Valley State. We also policed Park City since the police were at the school.

Citizen: I feel secure in this town. Now is the time we need to come together and support each other.

Wade: Do students realize school resources officers that can help them?

Student: We get that but we aren’t sure who we should be contacting with issues. We understand that resources are available but not always sure who to contact.

Wade: Perhaps if we publicize the resource officer more it would help.

Citizen: What about children at Learning Center who may be worrying about the kid next to them?

Dr Conley: I wish I had a good answer for you but we have to take every student individually.

Citizen: It’s the teachers at the learning center that makes the difference. The firing of teachers there is very concerning.

Dr Conley: I can’t speak on specifics but I have met with all teachers at the Learning Center.

And that was it… Re-reading the notes, it was a disjointed meeting. There are still citizen concerns over what happened regarding security at the High School. The district seems to be sticking with the concept that they have learned from their mistakes but. However, much of the public is still sticking with the concept that they don’t trust the district.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure how those two paths are reconciled.

Wow. If you wanted drama, you should have been at Office Hours With(out) Dr Conley this morning at Hugo Coffee. Each Friday, through the end of May, school district personnel are at Hugo Coffee to engage in conversation and answer questions. Today, School District Communications Specialist Molly Miller did an admirable job in the absence of School Board Superintendent Dr. Ember Conley. Approximately 20 to 25 people attended the meeting, which was focused on this week’s “threat” to Park City schools. In addition, Park City Police Chief, Wade Carpenter, another police officer, and Summit County Chief Deputy, Frank Smith, attended to answer questions.

I don’t know if school district Communications Specialist Molly Miller drinks alcohol, but if she does Dr Conley owes her a nice bottle of wine (or a summer of snow cones if she does not) for her handling of the situation. There were more than a few passionate people at the meeting.

Unfortunately, I had to leave an hour and a half into the meeting. So, I didn’t capture the conclusion. However, the following should give you a good flavor for how it went down. I tried to paraphrase what each person said during the meeting. I also have audio of the meeting which I will post a little bit later.

Molly Miller (School District): We understand that people are angry. Unfortunately Dr Conley could not be here due to a pre-existing commitment. Going forward, the district is changing procedures on how to communicate so that the next time the district can do better.

Citizen: When were you informed that there was a threat?

Chief Carpenter: I’ll answer that. In October we received a threat specific to this. The school resource office let us know there were problems. There was a plan in place to deal with the individual who did this. It is the chief’s understanding that the individual had been out of school since that time. Chief Carpenter says he has been researching active shooter cases. He says research suggests that when an individual is segregated from peers for long periods of time, there is an increased chance that they are more likely to engage in violent outbursts such an active shooter situations. Similar to situations where the student had not been on campus for 7 months. Carpenter said that he would rather know the location of the individual that made the threats. This would give law enforcement the ability to search them and keep an eye on them in a controlled environment versus having them sit at home thinking about what their intent to do potential harm.

Citizen: Kids knew kid and kids knew of the date. That’s how it became an issue.

Citizen: Email from Ember triggered whole thing.

Citizen: My concern is that the police knew there was a threat for the May 3rd, who was not in district for extended period of time. Why at the time when this threat was made weren’t parents notified?

Chief Carpenter: That’s not my issue. I don’t have authority to speak on behalf of the district. I wasn’t aware there was an email going out at 10PM. I was not aware that the child was coming back that day.

Citizen: Why weren’t parents notified?

Chief Carpenter: I’ve answered that.

Molly: In October the threat was neutralized. The safety plan worked. The communication plan did not work (there wasn’t one).

Citizen: Why wasn’t there one?

Molly: I have been in office 2 months. I am working on a checklist on how to communicate with people effectively. I have a child and I understand.

Citizen: The district needs to be more professional. This was a big screw up. It was horrible.

Citizen: Could the police department have notified the Park Record.

Chief Carpenter: We don’t have authority. You have to understand how the process works. Had I knew the email was going out… we would have had a different email.

Citizen: What I have learned in my communications job is that when you put out something vague, people will fill in the blanks. The information should have been 100%. There should have been a dialogue before the May 3rd. I understand there is a child involved but we need this information and it should always be timely and it shouldn’t be vague. The police should look over these emails. They should be sent out a few days before. It’s also unfair to the kid [who made these threats].

Molly: I received the email that was supposed to go out to the public at 6PM. A lawyer vetoed a majority of information that was supposed to go out in email. I should have pushed harder to include most information. The timing of the email that went out was horrible.

Citizen: Who was involved in crafting the email.?

Molly: The board, the administration, and the lawyer reviewed the original email. I’m not sure who besides the lawyer reviewed the final email.

Citizen: I’m wondering if the board members were involved in the email. Their poor response to this issue concerns me.

Citizen: Why isn’t Ember here. This was the second time she hasn’t been here after a major issue.. We need our leader here.

Molly: Ember will be here a week from today.

Citizen: I would like to say that life is not perfect. I feel confident that the plan for security was good. So, while the communication was not optimal, I felt there was a plan in place and the schools were safe. I’m glad Molly is here. It is a learning experience for all of us.

Citizen: The crux of the problem is that we don’t trust the district, the school board, or Ember. When that happens, issues like this blow up.

Molly: We need to establish trust. What would help the school district get to that.

Citizen: When I first met Ember she was incredible. She responded to questions. Then after 6 months she stopped responding. She does that with the community, now. She gives different stories to different people. She has now built a wall between her and the community. Until this changes, I have no confidence in her.

Citizen: This is the second crisis (other is Ecker Hill incident involving Mr Spencer). The technology director was not there to answer why Mr Spencer’s alleged actions were not caught. That was the 3rd incident in a short period of time. We are not happy with communication and there have been walls built. We have issues in the district and it seems like the district puts a bandaid on and hopes we just forget. The district just hasn’t delivered.

Molly: Let’s talk about the Mr. Spencer thing. Gaggle is software we have implemented and that flags email and a human reads it when potentially dangerous information is found.

Citizen: Who made the decision to let the student who made threats back in to our schools?

Molly: I don’t know.

Citizen: I can answer that. I got a call from my daughter on April 14th. She told me that the student would be back at school. I met with various people at the district about this and shared my daughters concerns about this student coming back. They gave me the safety pan. I went home and gave it some thought. I still didn’t feel comfortable. So, on the 15th I went to the Park City Police. I brought evidence that included a Tumblr account. I asked my daughter about this tumblr account. So, I looked at it and its content was concerning. It was scary stuff. I then went to the high school and felt this was a legit concern to our community. Parents should be aware. Teachers should be aware. However they were making special exceptions that this girl is coming back to the learning center because they can control her there. I asked, does the Board Know? They said no. I asked then who does? The answer was the Administration. However, Ember never was in these meetings. Tom VanGorder said that they would send something out early to all teachers about it. Ember lied. It is B.S. that Ember said parents got concerned the day of. I have the days in April documented that the district was supposed to send things out that month but they didn’t. Parents were concerned weeks before.

Citizen: Ember needs to step down.

Molly: Let’s talk about fixing it.

Citizen: We need to build trust. If the school board wants to stay in place, they need to fire Ember.

Citizen: If we don’t want more fallout. Everyone of the people at last night’s school board candidate forum said that this was a disaster. We need an apology from Ember. She needs to show up. Ember is not an effective leader. She needs to admit that. She needs to step down. If she doesn’t, it will come out in the school board election. People will be elected that will fire Ember.

Citizen: What are the students thinking about this?

Student Who is at Meeting: I didn’t know about it until I got to school. I got to the learning center and no one knew. We were scared once we found out. Teachers didn’t talk about it or address it. They acknowledged the threat but kept it business as usual.

Citizen: Teacher’s always do what teachers are supposed to do. That is why they are so important.

Citizen: If there were a real threat, school wouldn’t be open. There were a huge population of parents who didn’t even know about this… I made the decision to keep my kids in school to show them I’m not nervous. The principal at Jeremy had a lockdown drill planned for that day and cancelled it. He handled it perfectly.

Citizen: Why is this school district having a problem? These issues are a common thing. Every other school district handles it. Why not us?

Molly: Ember is smart. She is good. If there would have been a problem, school would have been closed.

Citizen: I trust Molly and I trust Chief Carpenter, but I don’t trust Ember.

Citizen: We have one of the best districts in the nation. We have a lot of good things. Every single piece of good news has been buried in bad news for years. Now that Molly is here, hopefully that changes.

Citizen: It’s because our district handles things so poorly.

Citizen: Why did the police come to the Kearns Campus if there was no threat?

Chief Carpenter: We had officers there for the parents.

Citizen: So, you were not planning on having officers there?

Chief Carpenter: No, we were going to have a few officers there. At 6PM, we decided to have extra officers there to answer questions of parents after social media spun up. I wasn’t worried about this until individuals started calling me. I contacted people in the department and ensured that we had it handled, which we did. However, I wanted to make sure parents could ask questions of our officers (to ensure the parents were comfortable).

Citizen: This student could have walked into any school at anytime. Why didn’t Ember want to tell teachers about this ahead of time? Why did Ember make that decision not to tell her staff?

Molly: I can’t speak to that but there will be a new process.

Citizen: I’m hearing there are two intertwined issues. Every crisis situation will be different. You may not make the right decision. However, you need to acknowledge that you made a bad decision and tell us how you are going to fix it.

Citizen: The Tumblr account showed she had an obsession with Columbine. I understand that May 3rd was probably the safest day to be in school, but I had the information but most parents did not. I feel Ember lied to me.The district told me that the information was going to be distributed but it never was.

Citizen: Someone had to make the decision that this person should come back. What type of mental health screening was being done? Hopefully they had done their due diligence.

Citizen: What is being done for this person now? It sounds like she has issues. Is she getting the support they need.

Citizen: Is there special treatment for this individual?

Molly: Obviously we can’t respond with specifics.

Citizen: I think the fact that people are spreading this child’s name is horrible. We need to be better than this. We need to be careful.

Citizen: For three weeks, I kept my mouth shut and hoped that the district would do something. But they didn’t. Now unfortunately the name has been released because of the way this was handled by the district. It didn’t have to be this way.

Citizen: How many people know how many psychologist do we have in district? Two. We have no social workers in school.

Citizen: I want to know what the security plan is going forward? If I had a child at school from now until June 3rd, I may be concerned.

Chief Carpenter: When the child who made the threats is at the school, the student will have to be with their parent and the student has to be searched before they come on premise by the police.

Citizen: I trust you Chief Carpenter but I don’t trust the district the same way. We need to get there with the school district.

Chief Carpenter: During Sundance we had 3 bomb threats. We have active threats all the time. We handled it. We know how to handle these type of issues to the best of our ability.

Note: The discussion continued but I had to leave at 10 AM (an hour and a half into the one hour meeting)

So, that was the part of the meeting I could attend due to my day job.

Public comment is not always pretty… but it is an accurate assessment of how people feel. It was a doozy of a meeting. As someone who attends a lot of these things…this would be a 9 out of 10 on the scale of an engaging public meetings. Unfortunately the most engaging meetings are when some entity has screwed up. This would be one of those.

In October 2015, the Park City School District received a threat directed at teachers and an Administrator at the High School. Last night at about 9:30 the school district sent an email about the issue to the media. Today, the community has erupted on social media.

It’s not good.

Here are a few examples of the 120 comments posted this morning on Facebook:

“I am extremely disgusted by this! I am a student at PCHS and I find out that someone might kill me and the rest of our student body a couple hours before hand! They’ve known since October! I am losing trust in our district and I don’t know how much more I have left especially since they have basically put my life at risk! I do not appreciate that and I will not be going to school tomorrow! Have fun dealing with this superintendent Conley thanks again for risking my life”

“Apart from dealing with decisions about sending our kids to school tomorrow, how are we supposed to go forward with any sense of security for our kids safety in the future with such a lack of trust?”

“Completely unacceptable and alarming! It’s obvious the only reason we are being informed is because ‘word got out’. What is being done to prevent it from happening on another day? What happened with the student(s) who made the threat? I think we need more than a ‘kids are safe, it was handled in October’ answer!”

“How, as a parent, am I supposed to make an informed decision regarding my kids safety when you keep crucial information and potentially life threatening danger a secret? Even now, you are withholding details that should have been shared months ago with parents. This is completely unacceptable and totally irresponsible given the recent rash of incidents in our country. Give us ALL the information NOW!”

“Reading a number of responses, I see the school district, once again, saying that ‘there is a lot of misinformation going around.’ From experience, this means that 1. PCSD has poorly handled an issue, 2. PCSD communication was too little, too late, 3. parents, once again, have had to do their own due diligence to uncover facts and help each other, 4. PCSD does not like the external information they are hearing, regardless of truth, and 5. you are about to hear that everything is just fine, don’t touch the curtain, there’s nothing to see here. This, from a person who likes Park City and its parents and teachers with all my heart.”

“The true threat to our students is not this incident related to May 3rd. The threat is that our school system is being run by Dr. Conley who has repeatedly demonstrated she is not up for the job. She should step down from her position effective immediately.”

And yes, there are a hundred plus more comments that say similar things. This is turning into a big issue for the School District. I bet the School Board is following social media on this one.

Late last night Park City School District Superintendent Dr Ember Conley issued a press release notifying the public that there were threats made (in October 2015) against the Kearns Campus that mentioned today’s date. This morning, in an interview with KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher, Dr. Conley said that it was Park City School District students who had made threats against certain teachers and a school administrator. Ms. Thatcher asked if the students had been suspended. Dr. Conley replied that due to student confidentiality she couldn’t say but that all policies were followed.

So, what is the policy on making threats against a school? Policy 10100 – Safe Schools says:

2.I.B: A student shall be suspended from school for participation in any of the following prohibited conduct when it occurs (a) on school grounds, in school facilities, at school-related events, and in school dispatched or funded transportation, or (b) wherever it occurs, if it has a direct impact on the discipline or safety of the schools or the learning experience of a student.

Chapter 2.I.B.6 specifically seems to mention today’s threat when it provides an example: “(6) Commission of an act involving the use of force or the threatened use of force which substantially interferes with the educational process in the school, for another student or for an educator;.” I’d say that 2.I.B.6 fits the bill, since today is an AP testing day, students are likely freaked out about this, the police and fire department are on premises, and the threat was made against educators.

So, that indicates that it is likely the students who made these threats should have been suspended from school. But for how long?

In Chapter 2.II.A.1.C it says:

“Procedures for Suspension A. When a student engages in conduct for which suspension is possible or required under Chapter 2 of this policy, the following procedures shall occur: 1. For the first offense:(c) If the conduct is described in Chapter 2, Section I.B.2 through I.B7 of this policy, the principal or designee shall suspend the student for ten consecutive school days and in addition shall refer the student to the superintendent for suspension for up to an entire school year, or its equivalent imposed over two school calendars. Principals can also recommend a suspension for an indefinite period of time.”

So, the question is, was this policy followed? Were the students suspended for 10 straight days? Were each of them referred to the Superintendent for a decision on whether to be suspended for up to a year? Did high school principal Bob O’Connor decide to indefinitely suspend any students?

We’ve reached out to the school district with these questions and will report back with what they tell us.

We are not looking for individual students names. That would be a violation of privacy laws. However, we as citizens need to know that school policies are always followed. Even more importantly in a case that apparently was egregious enough to “beef up security” at our schools, we need to know that from the beginning this was taken very seriously. If the school district followed their policies, even though it may appear to be tough on some students, we’ll be on our way to knowing that our district won’t stand by idly for threats.