I was having dinner with a friend last week and we were talking about the School Board’s push to realign grades. The district has said they are realigning grades in order to offer full day kindergarten which in turn will help economically disadvantaged kids and our hispanic population catch up with their peers educationally by 3rd grade.

This was discussed initially by the School District’s Master planning Committee and then one day the Superintendent came into a Master Planning Committee and announced it was her decision to make and she was moving forward with full day kindergarten and realigning grades. This in turn caused a cascading effect that led to tearing down a school, moving it across town, adding on to the high school, and potentially rebuilding a campus.

My friend had a good point about this. She asked, “Why are we realigning grades? I explained the district’s rationale about Hispanic and economically disadvantaged kids needing some help. She said, “OK. How many parents of these populations were on the Master Planning Committee?” I responded, “well it was mostly school board, administrators, teachers, the planning company, and two people from the community.” She asked, “Do the two community members have hispanic kids or are they economically disadvantaged?” I said that I didn’t know for sure, but probably not.

She just shook her head.

She has a good point. At best it comes off as a little bit condescending where it’s another case where an outsider assumes to know what’s best for a group of children. At worst, this “oversight” will cause the entire effort (and expense) to be wasted.

What could have been done differently? While I understand the point of master planning is to think long-term, it seems the changes being pushed are generally based on helping an underserved population. So why not include a few representatives on the committee from those populations? What if they told you something critical, that you hadn’t accounted for. What if they would have told you that a majority of kids from those populations live in town and if they have to go all the way to Ecker hill for 5th-8th grade it’s likely they’ll drop out of school. Now, I’m completely making that up, because I don’t have enough knowledge of what the issues are and reasons why these kids are really having trouble. Did the committee have enough information?

And that’s the point. I heard ZERO discussion about these types of issues. It was as if the following simple equation was scientific fact:

All Day Kindergarten for Hispanic Kids = Success

It will be great to have an expanded high school, a new field house, a shiny Treasure Mountain Junior High, better locker rooms, an enhanced gym, and a better theater for Drama class, but have we solved the problem we allegedly set out to solve? I guess we’ll see.

The Park City School Board wrote a Guest Editorial to the Park Record on Saturday. I’m glad they are getting information out. However, I also believe we should be receiving an accurate message from the board. It has become obvious that the School Board desperately desires sweeping changes to our district. They have invested significant time and effort in this endeavor. Any time that happens there are incentives to push forward, whether it makes sense or not.

I have attended the Master Planning Committee meetings since January with a critical eye. That gives me a little different perspective on each of the issues. With that in mind, here are some thoughts (in blue) on each of the board’s statements:

We, the Park City School Board, appreciate the public input we have received in response to the current and future growth of our school district. Our Master Planning Advisory Committee has been meeting for nearly a year to determine a road map for district facilities. Our goal is to build facilities that help realize our vision of innovation and excellence in education. Done properly, and with the community’s support, we believe that Park City can become a top public school district on a national basis.

Most of us have the same goal. We want our schools to provide a quality education for our students. Yet, many of us don’t equate buildings with the quality of education.

Our process is open and transparent. We have held more than 30 public meetings with more than 500 participants from all over the district, while having weekly media coverage on the process.

I always worry when people point out that a process has been open and transparent. It’s usually because they are worried about whether they actually WERE open and transparent. That said, with a few exceptions, this process has been open. Any citizen could attend almost any meeting they wanted. That’s great and what, frankly, we as citizens should expect from all of our government organizations.

Keep in mind, though, that while there may have been 30 public meetings, don’t confuse what happened here with 30 largely attended meetings where the public could provide feedback that caused the the Master Planning Committee to tweak concepts throughout the whole process. There were a handful of community meetings where input was taken but “30” overstates things a bit.

The final master plan will reflect our students’ needs only, with the price tag largely driven by the growth of the district-resident student population. The final recommendation and plan will consider community ideas as well as input from City, County and UDOT experts on traffic impacts. It will consider carefully future growth scenarios. Ultimately, we believe the community will support a direction that puts the educational and safety needs of our children first.

Safety needs? Not sure where that came from. I suppose it sounds good.

As the final plan impacts all PCSD residents, we would like to set straight a few facts about the plan and the planning process:

1. Capacity – As capacity is the biggest driver for building new schools, the public should know that PCSD follows the same state capacity formulas that Utah’s other districts follow.

According to state public policy, our schools are full or almost full. Trailside will have trailers to accommodate students in the 2015-16 school year and Parleys Park may have trailers, depending on final enrollment. Our high school is also full. It is our responsibility to provide suitable space for our students.

This is a little bit of a tough issue to get one’s head around. What I learned through the Master Planning process is that the state has formulas for maximum capacity of our buildings. Yet, the maximum capacity is also driven off of how the school district declares square footage (and for what uses). Then there is the “threshold” amount, which is 90% of the maximum capacity. This threshold number is used for open enrollment which means that once you declare your school at 90% of maximum capacity (the threshold) you no longer have to take out of district students. Take a look at the following image and you’ll get an idea where our schools stand:

Yet, after I posted earlier information about these thresholds, a reader wrote in and asked, “Where did you get 1200 capacity [for the high school]? The master planning doc from 2011 lists PCHS capacity as 1500.” In my mind, that represents the real problem with talks about capacity. What is the real capacity? Has the district set a capacity that is artificially low in order to influence the public with regard to a bond? Have they set a capacity that is artificially low in order to reduce out of district students from attending our high school. Was the number in 2011 wrong? I don’t know. It comes down to trust of the district… and per my previous article on that, you likely know where I stand on that topic.

I also look at all the populations in elementary schools, which is somewhat the catalyst for this plan, and I wonder why they couldn’t just redo the boundaries to fit all day kindergarten in our schools? If you do that, then you are left with deciding whether you just want to rebuild Treasure Mountain Junior High. It’s a much simpler question to get your head around.

Finally, there has been a lot of talk of a bubble of extra students moving through our district. This is temporary. So, we may be building to account for a temporary problem. If you look at the school districts estimates in our elementary schools, after these changes, utilization is low in our elementary schools. This means that our schools will easily be open to outside enrollment, where our district loses a lot of money on each student. With Silver Creek Village and its 1300 units coming online (which are in the South Summit School District) it becomes easy to see that many of these kids would rather go across the street to Trailside than to Kamas or Heber. Thus, our tax dollars are spent outside the district.

2. Opportunity for All Students – There is strong evidence that early education provides an opportunity to assist our most at-risk students to become proficient by grade 3, if it is provided. PCSD has stated that closing the achievement gap is a priority and; therefore, we need to provide room for expanded Pre-K and all day Kindergarten.

Again, it may be possible to change boundaries in order to accommodate this. If that’s not possible, it is likely less expensive to add on to Trailside and Parley’s Park (if necessary). 

3. Building Locations – Scheme 3 was the overwhelmingly preferred option at our community open planning workshops. There were many notations on the plan, which we’ve incorporated into the final draft.

Again, “overwhelmingly preferred option” overstates things. There were 15 votes for “Scheme 3”. I think it is also important to actually understand what these community meetings were and were not.

Meeting 1: The Planner basically showed a slide show of updated AWESOME schools for about an hour and a half. The attendees were “Educated” on what features a new school has. There was about a 15 minute interactive session at the end where people provided input on the “ideal Park City learning environment.” The top answers were personalized learning, engaged learning, and interested learning.

Meeting 2: Attendees of the second meeting broke into groups and made a wish list of what buildings should go where on a map. Effectively they had a whole bunch of cutouts of buildings and put them on a map.

Meeting 3: The planner has taken the ideas from meeting 2 and made them into various “schemes.” Attendees then met and made comments on each of the schemes. This is where scheme 3 became the most popular.

My issues with these three meetings is that the process was effectively led down a hallway, with no doors. The meetings began with a process designed to get community members excited about building new things. Then a map, with preconceived ideas was placed before participants. Meanwhile, School District Master Planning Committee members sat at each table with community members, often guiding the discussion about what should be done. When a community member asked about cost during Meeting 2, because the process seemed pie in the sky, they were told costs would be discussed in meeting 3. They never were. Then we are told “Scheme 3” won, but that was with 15 total votes.

I think what many people think happened was that a group of community members got together, had a free flow of ideas, and then came up with what they thought was best for our community and students. What really happened, seems very different from that (in my opinion).

4. Bussing – All PCSD students currently attend school at the Ecker campus for 6/7th grades. Bussing reflects the geographic reality of our district; and students have been bussed for years. With a new 5/6 located at Ecker, students in town will ride the bus to Ecker for four years and students out of town will ride the bus to Park City High School for four years.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of kids will ride the bus from Park City to Ecker? that probably depends on how long it takes. If it’s anything like transit buses (in SLC), we will see about 6% of students ride. The rest of the kids will be driven to TMJH at Ecker Hill.

5. High School Expansion and Dozier Field Possible Move The Master Planning committee is considering several final alternatives for this necessary construction, including a western expansion that necessitates moving the current Dozier Field and a southward expansion that may cost more. Any expansion needs to make long-term educational and financial sense. We are also considering community and athletic preferences.

This one piqued my interest. The Master Planning Committee recommended no movement of Dosier Field. Why is moving it brought up here? Perhaps the school board wants to show that they can concede some things. Perhaps they are planning on going against the committee’s recommendation and are setting the stage. 

6.Property Values While our goal is innovation and excellence in education and private property values are out of our jurisdiction, we believe it would be difficult or impossible to find an example of a top school district anywhere in the country where property values have not gone up as schools continued to improve.

This is an interesting statement. It is true that research has shown that schools that score higher on standardized tests increase the property values of homes near those schools. Say you were looking to live in the Salt Lake area, you may choose to live in Provo because they have the best high school in the state. Now consider Park City. Right now Park City Schools do well on reading standardized tests. With math and science, the jury is still out. Let’s say we move from 55% competency in math to 75% competency. Does that impact home values here or is it the economy and whether second home owners can afford to pay more to be closer to PCMR? I think at a macro level, Park City schools are considered good (whether because of all the options available, because of better teachers, or its just the prevailing thought). So, does upgrading our schools actually correlate to increased property values. I have a hard time believing that.

Now let’s address the real concerns at hand. People during Master Planning Meetings were concerned with changes proposed at the Kearns campus. They felt the increased traffic, sound, lights, etc. of a “decked out” campus may decrease their property values in Park Meadows and Prospector. If you think about it, the concern is logical. Do you want to live around the carnival or would you rather live in Trailside, Pinebrook, Jeremy, or Silver Creek? It’s not that somehow Park City schools are going to cause the Park City area’s home values to decrease as a whole. It’s that home values could be impacted in some areas (Park Meadows and Prospector) due to these decisions. It’s a different, but important distinction.

Growth and change in our district creates concern and angst for some, but long-term population growth is our reality. There are many considerations for our district and we invite the public to continue to provide input and ask questions as our community moves forward to meet all of our student needs.

We understand that planning for the future requires a significant monetary investment, but also know that ignoring or not planning for growth will end up costing our community much more financially, and will result in a lack of quality learning environments for our students.

We all want what is best for our students. Yet, we also want our leaders to be make good choices with our money. Money that is spent today, may not be available tomorrow. That isn’t a concern as long as our community has both the means and commitment to continually fund increased costs and taxes year after year for schools. Whether we are close to that point or not is a point of debate. It will likely play itself out over the course of the next few years as the bond for this effort goes to the public and the school district needs an extra infusion of money to keep its “rainy day fund” above water.

A person commented on our live blog of the School Board’s Master Planning Committee meeting and said, “One could ask why they don’t reevaluate their “learning plan” if having dual immersion, full day kindergarten and on campus pre school are costing millions. Those programs were sold as cost neutral.”

Those programs were sold as cost neutral? I hadn’t heard that before. So, I decided to research the topic. Through the grace of the Park Record’s website, I found the following:“In theory, the only additional cost [of dual immersion] to the district should be through additional training, board member Maurice Hickey said.” Yet, five years later we are looking at adding on to McPolin to account for dual immersion? What’s that cost? We aren’t sure yet, but it is likely to be between $2-$5 million. That’s a lot of money that could be used on teachers.

If it was an isolated incident, you could chalk it up to a mistake. We all make mistakes. Yet, I come back to the school district’s PC CAPS program. That’s the one where students work with local companies to do projects and better understand the real world. PC CAPS was originally billed as a program where students would work at company locations and cost the district about $75,000 per year. Then we heard that the school district wanted to build a $5 million PC CAPS building and that the annual budget is about $450,000. The building was shot down due to public outcry but the ongoing costs remains. Now the district has upended the high school library to place the PC CAPS program. Wait… why do we need to pay for space? Aren’t students supposed to be working at their company’s facilities?

Let’s go back further. When Park City High School was renovated, it allegedly cost about $10 million more than was estimated. This was somewhere between a 25% to 50% overrun.

Now the public is being asked to pay for a bond (probably $40-$50 million+) to tear down Treasure Mountain Junior High, add on to the high school, build a 5th/6th school at Ecker Hill and add on to McPolin elementary. This effort seems to have began as an effort to rebuild Treasure Mountain Junior High and has morphed into … uh…something. As time progressed, it was messaged as a need to fix the fact that only 9% of 11th grade hispanic kids are proficient in English (after spending their tenure in Park City Schools). So, we introduce all day kindergarten to ENSURE this population is proficient in english (9 years later). This causes our elementary schools to become too full. This forces the the high school to accept a 9th grade class. A 9th grade class requires additions to the high school ($20 million), and then requires that 5th-8th grades reside at Ecker Hill ($30 million), which then means we need to build another school. Meanwhile, the district decides to also build on to McPolin elementary school to provide space for both kids that may come from the new Park City Heights development and to provide an alternative to kids that don’t want to be in dual immersion.

Do you believe all of that? Do you believe the school district will implement it correctly? Do you believe they will do it for the money they estimated?

You might. And that is fair. The school district may get it right.

Yet, I come down to the fact that recently they haven’t. We have the aforementioned three examples of getting it wrong. We also have the fact our schools have slipped out of the top rankings.

Are you willing to bet that $50 million will fix the problems? Or should we fix the problems and then, as citizens, provide the money? Park City Schools have lived off its reputation for a long time. Have we financially neglected our schools, which has led to some sub par results? Or is it something else? We do pay our teachers more than every other district in the state. Perhaps, it’s just the buildings. If only we had the best buildings, our students could achieve. Somehow, I doubt that. I’ll remind you that Treasure Mountain Junior High’s SAGE test scores were on par with the High School’s test results. Yes, students attending the “cursed” school had similar scores as those at our flagship school.

The more I hear, the more it just sounds like excuses. I’d be inclined to give the Park City School District the benefit of the doubt. Yet, as they say fool me once twice three times shame on you. Fool me again, shame on me.

Do I really believe that what the school district is proposing will provide a commensurate return in better education? I don’t think so. What I do believe is that when it doesn’t work they’ll be back with an even GRANDER plan to solve all our problems.

It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this, but there is just a lack of trust.

That’s the sort of thing that can’t be rebuilt with money.

Click read more for today’s live blog:

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A few days ago, I received a comment from a reader about rebuilding a 7/8/9th school on the Treasure Mountain site. The reader commented, “Hundreds of TMJH students walk back and forth to the HS for classes. This not only isn’t fun in the winter, it also makes them late for classes.” I was visiting with a friend about this and her comment was, “Did you ever walk across your college campus when it was -25 degrees and bare skin would freeze in 30 seconds? No? Did you ever have 15 minutes between college classes but the walk took 20 minutes? Welcome to the real world.”

She has a point. I lived about a mile from campus during college. That was about a 20 minute walk. Campus took about another 20 minutes to walk across if my class was on the other side. And yes, in winter, it was cold. We talk about preparing our kids for the future challenges all the time, yet I think many people would agree that Park City doesn’t represent the real world for many things our children will encounter.

Some of the things that come to mind from my time in school:

• If you go to a state school, you will have 300 people in your English 101 class (and math, and biology, and…).
• Most instructors don’t give a damn about you. If they do, they’ll pretend they don’t to make your better.
• You will take classes in some pretty crappy environments. If you don’t succeed just because the paint is peeling or it smells a little bad, that’s on you.
• Your professor, instead of asking you to stand up and say “I am an overprivileged white shit head” will just explain exactly how you are one.

The point is that it cuts both ways. If we are preparing our kids educationally for the “real world” we can’t ignore the basic “struggles” they will face. One of those could be walking a long way in an ice storm to attend a lecture that they care nothing about.

If we pamper our kids now, it only does them a disservice later.