On February 9th, Sheila Page from the Utah State Attorney General’s Office met with the Park City School Board. She provided training on the Utah Open Meetings Act. During the meeting, Ms. Page told the school board “that looking at the meeting agenda, you are not properly going into closed session.” A closed session is a meeting, with public officials, where there is not a publicly available record recorded. The purpose of this law is so that the public knows how decisions are being made by our elected officials. There are a very narrowly defined set of circumstances where Utah state law allows a closed meeting:

• Discussion of a person’s character, competence, or health;
• Strategy for collective bargaining;
• Pending or imminent litigation;
• An acquisition of real property including water rights or shares;
• Discussion of security system;
• Investigation of criminal conduct;
• Specified commercial information discussed by a county legislative body;
• Certain legislative or political subdivision (S.B. 180) ethics complaint matters;
• Fiduciary or commercial information being discussed by the Utah Higher

What the Park City School District was apparently doing was not properly providing a motion, during a public meeting, with the specific reasons for closing a meeting. Ms Page said that a closed meeting should be a rare event. When a closed meeting does occur, the government body must provide the exact reasons for the meeting being closed.

Likewise, according to Ms. Page, meeting minutes and a recording must be kept of the closed meeting unless the board chair person signs an affidavit stating that the events discussed in the closed meeting were regarding the character, competence, or health of a person or persons.

So why do you, as a citizen, care? Transparency. We all want decisions made by the school board to be understood by the public. If your representative is Tania Knauer, how did she feel about the Reading Aids being removed from our elementary schools? If all conversations happened during public meetings, then GREAT! If a discussion about the issue took place in “Closed Session.” That’s not so great. We’ll never know what is said.

I think back to the baseball coach who was let go last year. Were there any discussions regarding that individual (outside of his character and competence… which are legal topics to be discussed in closed meetings) discussed in closed school board meetings?

To the School Board’s credit, during the next meeting (February 23rd), Tania Knauer, School Board President, followed proper procedure by asking if there was any board member who wanted to move into closed session to talk about the character and competence of an individual. They did not move into closed session during that meeting.

Yet, I wonder what may have been discussed during previous closed meetings… before they were “informed” that they were likely violating a Utah statute. Were Reading Aides discussed in closed session? Was any bond information discussed? Was the baseball coach discussed, beyond competence and character?

If so, and if any conversations occurred during any improperly closed session , then any conversations during those illegitimate closed meetings would be on the public record. We as citizens could hear the conversations that took place during the meeting.

Perhaps the Park Record is investigating this. This would be the normal role of the press. One of the essential roles of a local newspaper is ensuring that local government is following the rules. Maybe they are fulfilling this role. If not, we at the Park Rag are doing our best.

What is important to us at the Park Rag is that government matters are transparent. If there is a discussion that shouldn’t take place behind closed doors, we want to help ensure that those discussions happen in a public facing way.

It looks like the school board is taking steps to ensure that will happen going forward. We hope that in the past, while experts say the Park City School Board may have not been following rules, that all actions and discussions taken behind closed door were legitimate.

If not, we may have a real problem, with real consequences.

You may have heard that last November, the $56 million Park City School District bond failed. Six months on, it is probably fair to say that it failed due to a lack of specifics, a lack of trust, and perhaps an overreach. It was a big failure. People in Park City are willing to spend big money on schools… and the fact that they weren’t willing with this proposal says something.

With that in mind, this week school board member Phil Kaplan announced he was running again for the school board. Fair enough. He took over for Moe Hickey when Mr had to resign from the board and was only on the board for about 5 months when the bond vote failed and only about 2 when the school board decided to go forward with the bond.

I would have been inclined to say, “Sure, let’s give him a full term to see what he can do.” Also, from what I’ve seen in a number of meetings, he seems like a very reasonable and thoughtful person. From community reports, he is also the school board member that has reached out the most to those who opposed the bond to understand their positions.

Then I read a reader-comment in the Park Record about Mr Kaplan running for the school board (I know, that’s a dangerous thing). The comment said, “The Park City Board should have new faces only. The failed bond was a disgrace, and now out of spite, the Board is trying to sweep pulling teachers aids out of classrooms under the rug without allowing the parents to know. Hopefully, only new faces will be on the board and not this guy.”

HMMM. The anonymous commenter makes a somewhat valid point. Sometimes the only way to deliver a message that things aren’t right is to unilaterally make a point. In this case, the point is two-fold. First, the school board voting to put the bond on the ballot was not right. Second, the whole process that led up to and created the bond was not right either. One could argue, if we don’t make an example of the school board members running for reelection, then how can we expect the next version of the school board to be better. It’s a somewhat valid point.

Yet, in the case of Mr Kaplan, I keep coming back to the fact that his background is probably what we want on the school board. He is entrepreneurial. He is logical. He has been successful outside of the educational world. When he speaks, he makes sense.

So, is it right to make a unilateral decision to “throw the bums out!”?

Probably not.

I completely understand the desire to send a message, but our community is best served by making logical decisions. Discounting a member based purely on the fact that they are on the school board now, isn’t a logical way to look at it. Their actions on the school board should, of course, impact your vote to some extent, but probably not at the 100% level.

I believe we should take into account that the current board members voted to put the bond on the ballot, even with its obvious flaws. Yet, that should not be the sole measure of whether a current member should be elected for another term. We should judge them on their performance and look at how they voted on other issues.

What makes it hard to judge a current member’s performance, based on issues, is that the school board always seems to vote in unison and somewhat speaks in unison. That makes it tough for the public to differentiate positions. If every vote a school board member casts is identical to every other member, our main means of judging them is by what they say. The only way a citizen knows what members individually say is by watching hours and hours of video of school board members every couple of weeks. That isn’t likely to happen.

That then leads us back to judging our school board based on the successes and failures of the board as a whole. If all citizens see is a board that acts as a collective, what choice do they have but to judge the school board members as a collective. The collective view is that the board pushed through a horrible bond. That would indicate that we should judge each member NOT ON who they are or what they say but by the simple fact that they were on the school board.

So, we have come full circle.

We don’t want to judge school board members solely by the failure of the bond, but we have no other option because they are not often acting as individuals but acting as a group. So, when Mr Kaplan says HE WANTS TO DO ALL THESE THINGS… the question we need to ask is … is he speaking for himself or speaking for the collective? Good question.

Where does that leave the voter?

… In a quagmire.

Do you believe that the individual matters with regard to the school board?

I suppose that is the fundamental question. Your answer to that question likely determines whether you believe we should either clean house or vote for the best person in the next school board election.

There has been much discussion on taking Reading Aides out of Park City School District classrooms. There have been some emails from School Board Members floating around social media. Just in case you care and haven’t seen those, I wanted to make sure everyone had access to better understand the issue:

Here a citizen provides part of an email exchange with school board member Julie Eihausen. According to the citizen, Ms. Eihausen emailed:

1: Our current reading/ESL programs are not working. While we understand and appreciate that aides have become a part of the educational family for students and parents, we cannot continue to invest funding in programs that have been shown to be failing our students.

2: All day Kindergarten was moving forward for the 2016-17 school year with or without any changes to the reading program. These two decisions are not related. Programs are assessed and funds are reallocated on a regular basis. PCSD did not determine how much money was needed to fund all dayK and then go and look for a program to cut, reallocations are a part of our annual budget process.

3: All day Kindergarten has been proven in study after study after study to assist in closing the achievement gap, engaging students by providing them with the opportunity to succeed and creating a much better attitude towards school. When children aren’t always “behind”, they enjoy and excel much more in school. Investment in early childhood education saves thousands if not millions of dollars in intervention costs.

4: While some aide positions are no longer viable, several others are new. The new opportunities provide full-time employment that includes benefits. This is a desire we heard loud and clear from our Classified Employees Association and we are proud to be able to offer stable, desirable employment to more employees.

Thank you for your input and we look forward to all working together as a community to improve education in Park City. Again, we encourage anyone who has questions to please get the facts and not rely on neighborhood postings/blogs/Facebook.

As always, I am willing to sit down and meet with anyone who would like to discuss this further.

Sincerely,

Julie Eihausen

The citizen also received a response from school board member Tania Knauer. The response from Ms. Knauer was:

I think the Reading scores show we need to change something. We’ve been doing the same thing for way too long. Not that there aren’t amazing reading teachers and specialist in the district, there are.

I don’t think anything is cast in stone and it will be evolving as we implement it, some things will work and some will need tweaking. The best part about all of this is the discussion and attention it’s getting. It had been plugging along for a very long time virtually unnoticed.

We don’t have all the answers and we probably won’t until we get started. Like DI, there is a great deal that we didn’t know until we got farther into the implementation. It’s really about keeping a pulse on it and making sure we are adjusting course as needed.

I personally believe Ms Knauer and Ms Eihausen make good points. I applaud their willingness to push change. As anyone who has been in corporate america knows… change is hard. Willingness to force change shows gumption.