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.

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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.

An incensed reader wrote to me about a $108 million school bond approved in Provo late last year. She said, “How in the he** does Provo rebuild 5 schools for $100 million when we get 1 new school and an addition to the High School for $50 million. Are we paying Park City prices for our schools too?”

It does seem interesting. The Provo School District is rebuilding Provo High (about 1650 student) and four elementary schools as part of the project. The high school has 4 wings and they are tearing down and rebuilding one at a time. Each of the elementary schools are being completely torn down and rebuilt.

What’s equally as interesting is why they are rebuilding their schools. It appears most of these schools are 50-60 years old. In the case of Provost Elementary, “an employee goes to work an hour and a half early every Monday morning to turn on the water so it’s not brown when the kids arrive.” In Park City’s case, Treasure Mountain was built in 1983 (32 years old) and was renovated in the late 90’s. We are tearing it down because it is “cursed” and has bad pipes. Reading that, and comparing the two, it makes me feel like we are a bunch of spoiled, rich kids. Incredible.

So, I don’t know what to more upset about. Should I be more upset that we seem to want to tear down a school that has some issues but in the scheme of things probably isn’t that bad, or should I be more upset that we are paying a fortune to do it. I’ll probably just hate the decision for all of the above.

Lest you think Provo is just a bunch of “Choose the Right”ers with awful education, and so they can afford to cheap out on schools, I’ll remind you that Provo has the top high school (Timpview) in Utah according to US News and World Reports. So, they seem to know what they are doing.

There are just so many things that are wrong with the process we are heading down. I’ve been watching the Park City School District Master Planning process since January, so i know how we got to where we are. That said, where we are is starting to look like a very bad place.

Previously I wrote that it may make sense to look at rebuilding Treasure Mountain Junior High on Kearns with 7th, 8th, and 9th grade at the facility. It was about 40% cheaper than what the school district seems to be contemplating. Yet, there may be an even cheaper alternative.

The core issue, according to our district, is that we need to have Pre-K and all day kindergarten in our elementary schools. It has been stated that there isn’t room for this. So, the district has gone down a path of realigning grades that has lead to a cascading effect that will likely cost over $50 million.

Yet, what if there was a cheaper alternative? What if we were to add on a few classrooms at each school? What would that cost? Let’s say we added 3 classrooms for Pre-K and kindergarten at each of the 4 elementary schools. That would be 12 total classrooms. If each class held 25 students (higher than it would likely be) and we used a standard square footage of 117 square feet per elementary student, with construction costs at $170 per square feet. That is a cost of about $6 million.

That is about 1/8 the cost of what is currently planned. It is likely even less because some schools like Jeremy Ranch already have the room. Perhaps you’d use Jeremy’s “3 classrooms” at Trailside instead. There are lots of options…

The important point is that there seem to be many strategies to achieve our goals, many of which cost much less money than $50 million.

If we only had an open mind…