Information has been floating around social media about a “special” school board meeting yesterday regarding raising taxes. The implication was that the board was planning on raising taxes later this year.

That may or may not be true but their was nothing sinister about this special meeting. It seems that School Board Business Administrator Todd Hauber believes that the Utah State Legislature will pass legislation requiring a group like the Park City School District to declare that they may raise taxes by March 4 (if they want to increase taxes this year).

So, while you may not be in favor of the school district raising taxes this year, that’s not what this meeting was about. This meeting was about ensuring that the school board has options later this year for increasing funding.

Therefore, at most, this meeting was an indicator that increasing property taxes may be a possibility in the future.

Here is the 7 minute video of the discussion at the school district yesterday, if you’d like to see it for yourself:

Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard various school-related people make the statement that they aren’t trying to hurt our kids with the decisions that they make. For instance, School Superintendent Dr. Ember Conley had this exchange with KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher on Monday:

Leslie Thatcher: “It doesn’t sound like you have convinced those signing a petition. They are basically saying that this change is going to have a huge negative impact on our kids.”

Dr. Conley: “I live and breathe this job and this community and for our students. I would never do anything to harm our students. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Change is really hard”

First, I want to make it clear that I (and most people I know who have been critical of the board/district) don’t believe the School Board or the Superintendent have some master plan to harm our children. You don’t run for a basically non-paid position like the school board, that lasts 4 years, with the intent to destroy our schools. I assume the reason is because you have a passion for it and want to instill your values and ideas on our educational system.

That said, it does concern me that criticism of ideas is sometimes interpreted as a personal attack. For instance, I don’t think the majority of the 435 people signing a petition to keep our reading aides in our classrooms think Dr. Conley or Dr. Einhorn are trying to hurt our kids intentionally. I would guess the majority of the 435 people just disagree with removing reading aides from our classrooms. They just think it’s the wrong thing to do.

Likewise, when Dr. Conley uses the “I am not trying to harm our kids” statement as an answer to a question like Ms. Thatcher’s on Monday morning, it does everyone a disservice. An answer like that doesn’t explain the district’s position. I know board members and Dr Conley have answered those questions many times, in many places, but Ms. Thatcher provided Dr Conley with an opportunity to summarize her thoughts and convince some of those 435 people signing the petition that perhaps the school district knows what it is doing.

Instead of saying, I’m not trying to harm our kids, she could have said something like, “This will actually have a positive impact on our children. ESL students will be better off because studies have shown that reading aides are ineffective in helping ESL kids and the only known factor to improve performance in English Language Arts is by focusing on Kindergarten and providing an interventionist as ESL students progress. Non ESL students will benefit because once ESL students are performing better, teachers will have more time to focus on every student individually. So, while it seems that removing reading aides is detrimental to our students, I believe it will benefit almost every student in our school district.”

Now, is any of that true? I don’t know. I just made it up. However, I assume if the school district is making this change that they have as good or better reasoning.

What is the role of the Park City School Board? I hadn’t really considered the question until a Park Rag commenter mentioned the subject. Even then, I guess I thought it was one of those questions that gets brought up now and then but is more hypothetical…

until….

I received an email exchange between a citizen and a Park City School Board member about removing Reading Aides from classrooms and a petition by citizens to get those aides back in the classroom. The citizen’s email can be summarized by a closing statement, “I can tell you that everyone with whom I have spoken has already read, and heard, ‘The Narrative,’ and all are still wanting for details that justify the elimination of crucial instructors in our elementary schools.”

The school board member responded with an email that began, “Thank you for all the time you have taken on this issue. Although I understand that there are a lot of people that have signed the petition we do not make education decisions based on community opinion.”

“We do not make education decisions based on community opinion”? What? The School Board is elected by the community. The School Board serves the community interest. This is like saying, “Community you are too dumb, so we make decisions for you.”

As the back-story to this whole issue, the school district is removing Reading Aides from elementary classrooms, (mostly) because “english as a second language” kid test scores aren’t high enough and what the district has done to date has failed (according to the district). So, they are getting rid of Reading Aides, hiring one “Interventionalist” per school, and offering All Day Kindergarten because the district “has to do something.”

As a further back-story, the problem with the district’s line of thinking is that many studies show that All Day Kindergarten’s benefit (over part day Kindergarten, which we have now) typically disappears by first or second grade. The other issue is that Kindergarten isn’t mandatory, so the very students the district thinks they are targeting may not even show up.

Alright, back to the quote… “We do not make education decisions based on community opinion.” I could see if the district had a rock solid plan, that was indisputable based on facts, yet the public was making demands that were unreasonable and idiotic, that the district may say “public, you just aren’t educated enough on this topic.”

However, that’s not the case here. The Park City School District appears to be taking a flyer on trying to “fix” low test scores in low performing groups and the public is calling them out on it. By the way, 400+ people have signed the petition to keep Reading Aides in our schools. If you assume that most people signing a school petition have kids in school, that likely represents between 10%-20% of our kids. You may dismiss 5% of the people when they say “what’s going on?”… but 10% to 20%?

So, what is the role of the Park City School Board? Should the board not make education decisions based on community opinion? The issue I have with this is that almost every decision the board makes is an educational decision. Should the board not factor in community opinion? If at some point community opinion becomes overwhelming, should they not change course?

The real answer is that the board doesn’t have to do anything. They’ve been elected and can do what they want and think is best. I don’t think the board is acting maliciously. However, they may have been backed into a corner on this one.

If the board really does feel that they don’t need to listen to the community, and that they are acting in our students’ best interest, then I guess the public’s only recourse is either voting those individuals out of office or waiting for results to see if the decisions they made worked.

What’s more concerning is that our community’s opinion doesn’t appear to count. I guess that means that we as a public should no longer show up at board meetings and express our feelings. I guess it means that parents shouldn’t share their opinions with teachers. I guess it means that the school district is above us all.

Does that feel right? I don’t think so.

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.