Occam’s razor effectively states, “when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better.” It’s a great way to look at things because I think most of us would agree a less complex solution has a better chance of success.

Over that past year, the Park City School District has formed a Master Planning Committee to look at the future needs of our schools. This started out by looking whether Treasure Mountain Junior High should be rebuilt. It then morphed into grade realignment. Then it morphed into a complete rebuilding of the Kearns Campus, that included moving Treasure Mountain to Ecker Hill (or Bear Hollow). Then it morphed into adding all sorts of sports facilities.

Let’s first start by disregarding all the changes to the Kearns campus. Those in effect were driven by the “decision” to make the other changes. This is how it went… If we are going to have grade realignment and add all day kindergarten to our schools we have to move the 5th graders out of our elementary schools because there isn’t room. If the 5th grade gets moved out then they have to go somewhere and it makes sense to put them with 6th graders. If we put the 5th and 6th graders together, it makes sense to have the 7th and 8th graders together. If that happens, it doesn’t make sense to have the 9th graders in a building by themselves so the high school will have to expand to accommodate 9th grade. If we are going to expand the high school, we need to move Dosier Field. If we are going to move Dosier Field, let’s make an athletic part of the campus on the east side. If we are going to make an athletic area of the campus, let’s have a field house. And so on…

Let’s go back to why we needed to expand the high school; grade realignment. So, why do we need grade realignment? School Superintendent Dr. Ember Conley announced that we needed this because only 9% of our 1th grade Hispanic student were competent in English according to SAGE test results. She said that research shows that if you can get these Hispanic kids into all day kindergarten, they will be on par with other students by 2nd grade.

So we need all day Kindergarten to positively impact this population group. Dr. Conley then announced this would need to trigger grade realignment because there wasn’t space in our elementary schools for all day kindergarten. So, this triggers a cascading effect of changes that leads to a $50-$100 million bond to rebuild the entire district. You keep K-4 in the elementary schools. You build a 5/6 school. You have a 7/8 school. You add on to the high school for 9th grade. Since you are doing that, you make the Kearns campus everything everyone may ever want.

What interesting is to back up and look at the root issue. The root issue is adding all day kindergarten to our existing elementary schools. If you take each school individually, I would tend to agree with Dr Conley that there is no space to add full day kindergarten to some of our schools. Yet, what about Jeremy Ranch? They currently have 594 students and have a capacity of 708 (functional capacity of 673). It looks like you could add full day kindergarten classes from at least two schools (30 students in each class) there and still have a little room. What about McPolin? They have 407 students currently and have a capacity of 563 (functional capacity of 535). It looks like you could add 3, 30 student kindergartens to this school.

So, it appears while there may not be room in some of our individual schools to house a full day kindergarten, there likely is plenty of room district wide. What does that mean? We’d need to adjust district boundaries (or incent some students to attend other schools) to even out the number of students. I know that’s probably not a welcome topic in some circles, but neither is putting kids in mobile homes for a year while building happens, having a year without a stadium (as dosier field is rebuilt), or spending $50 million dollars.

There is also the argument that growth is coming and we need to account for that. Actual estimates for student growth by the school district are between a drop of 0.3% and an increase of 2%. The middle range is growth of 1.1%. Changing boundaries would likely more than account for that too.

Now back to Occams’ Razor. To achieve the goal of full day kindergarten and account for a little growth what is the better alternative?

• Make elementary schools Pre-K to 4th, build a 5/6 school at Ecker, tear down Treasure Mountain Junior High, add on to the high school, move the football field, add all sorts of athletic facilities, and spend $50 million.
• OR Change school boundaries so that we even out the population at our schools.

If we take the second option, then 5th grade doesn’t get forced out of our elementary schools. Our 6th and 7th grades can stay at Ecker. Our 8th and 9th grades could stay at treasure Mountain (we could still decide to rebuild that). Our High School would stay 10th-12th and no additions would need to take place.

Then later, if a real issue arises that requires a massive rebuilding effort, we’d still have space and money to do it.

I think the simplest solution, and the one that makes the most sense, is likely to just move the boundaries.

The heckling started early during last night’s School Board Master Planning regarding rebuilding/moving our schools. A person from the audience interrupted the meeting by shouting something about how the school’s plans would never work. Rory Murphy, co-chair of the School District Master Planning Committee, took it in stride, saying “OK. OK. Thanks for that.” He then continued forward.

During so many government meetings, the audience is chastised and told to be quiet, not clap for ideas they support, and not to “intimidate others” by showing support for something they like. Yet, Mr Murphy let it all happen… and to everyone’s benefit. He embraced the cheers from people who said that Treasure Mountain Junior High should be torn down. He welcomed the applause from people who said that the district had over reached and made too grand a plan. He was fine when people yelled in support of building a field house .

What he allowed to happen was truly a town hall, where passion was expressed and people truly felt part of something. What Mr Murphy did was trust in the people. He didn’t feel the need to control the situation and was rewarded with a great exchange of ideas from all sides.

It was the type of meeting that people will come back to because it was both interesting and fun. In fact, this type of meeting is what we need more of, if we want the public to provide input. In other meetings where the public is told to behave like a page out of Father Knows Best, it often seems like the chairperson is afraid of what the public may say.

In this case, Mr Murphy showed us that if you have a little faith in the people, they just may surprise you.

Tonight we are at the School District’s public meeting related to rebuilding its Kearns Campus and moving Treasure Mountain to Ecker Hill. The connection is a little spotty, so I’ll do my best to keep up.

Click Read More to follow along…

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One of the arguments the School District’s Master Planning Committee likes to make is that construction cots are rising by 5% per year. So, we better build lots of stuff now because it will cost more to do so later.

While costs are rising, that’s generally ALWAYS been true. Take a look at the Turner Non Residential Building Cost Index since 1997 shown below. You’ll see that 2014’s cost increase of 4.4% is in line with most years historically. It appears that 2015 will be in the same ballpark.

So, is there any real rush to build this because costs are going up? It doesn’t look like any more urgency than any other time. You might also wonder that if 2009/2010’s decreases are any indicator of what happens to costs during a recession, why wouldn’t we wait for that type of period. We are overdue for a recession, after all. Finally, the longer we wait, the more home values will likely have risen, which should mean more money in the school’s bank and a smaller bond.

It seems like there is no reason to rush into building for the sake of forgoing future costs. If we wait a bit, it may even cost a little less.

Instead, the Master Planning Committee seems to be pushing more fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

“You better buy that used car today, ’cause prices are going up next week!”

I received an email from a reader about Park City Schools:

After hearing Dr. Conley’s talk about being the ‘best’ in the nation, I wondered what metric for scholastic achievement they are using.

According to the 2015 US News/ World Report, out of the 20,000 or so high schools in the country, PCHS is not even listed in the top 4,000. We are, in fact right in the middle of the pack, where UT schools are considered, of which Timpview HS in Provo ranked #952 nationally, earning a ‘Silver’ rating.

PCHS does fairly well in Language proficiency – 96%, but falls down in Math – 59% proficiency.

College readiness is 52.4 out of a possible 100

This is particularly infuriating to me, when considering the District’s planned juggling of grades, moving schools out of our community, and schemes for huge sports complexes, all at significant impact to our school neighborhoods and great expense to taxpayers.

I think it’s time the District & Project Team come clean, and re-focus on quality education for Park City students.

I share this person’s frustration. I have been in meetings with School Superintendent Dr. Ember Conley where she has said that in the upcoming US News Rankings that we may be one of the top schools in the country. I love the passion but I question the reality. I checked into the rankings the reader referenced.

The highest ranked school in Utah is Timpview High. It is ranked 952 nationally, as the reader stated. Wasatch High (in Heber) is the 6th ranked school in Utah and #1803 in the nation. There are 14 Utah high schools ranked in the top US News High Schools and unfortunately Park City High isn’t one of them. It appears that approximately 7,000 high schools are ranked nationally by US News, and since Park City isn’t ranked at all, it would put us somewhere between a “ranking” of 7,000 and 21,000 according to the magazine. Getting from where we are to “one of the top schools” will be interesting to see… unless “top school” just means getting ranked somewhere in the top 7,000 schools in the country.

You may say that “US News Rankings are just silly and don’t mean much.” You may be right. I would then bring up that Park City High School was ranked 14th in the state’s SAGE testing. You may say, “those are horrible standardized tests and mean nothing.” You may be right on that too.

Yet, I’ll come back to what the reader said. If you’re going to call yourself the best, then you have to provide SOME metric that demonstrates that. Perhaps there is a metric that proves some outside organization ranks Park City as one of the best high schools in the country. I certainly hope so. For now though, that claim seems to just be something someone said. And as a friend of mine used to say, “just because you say something, it doesn’t make it true.”

Yesterday morning on KPCW, Basin Recreation’s Rena Jordan was on with KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher. Ms. Jordan was giving an update on various topics but the one that caught my attention was about Basin Rec building a fieldhouse on 17 acres of land near the new Silver Creek Village (by Home Depot).

You see, the school district also seems to want an indoor fieldhouse on its Kearns campus. It reminds me of the line from the movie Contact: “The first rule in government spending is ‘why have one when you can have two at twice the price’.”

Here is the exchange:

Leslie Thatcher: And you’d use this parcel of land [17 acres near Silver Creek Village) for indoor recreation?

Rena Jordan: That’s what we have identified this parcel for. We haven’t determine the specifics. There are 3 top priorities that the community and our needs assessment identified, which are an aquatic facility, a second sheet of ice, and mostly our focus would be on indoor recreation space. We have on indoor field in town and we’re going to follow the master plan of the school district to see what parses out of that process because there is still plenty of need…

Leslie Thatcher: So Something similar to what we have with the [Kimball Junction Basin Rec] fieldhouse?

Rena Jordan: Something similar but hopefully bigger. The current field house sits on 2.8 acres and this is 17.3 acres of land. So you can imagine we have the opportunity to build something more expansive but we won’t use all of that 17 acres.

To be fair, Ms. Jordan did say she was watching what was happening with the School Master Planning Committee, with regard to building a fieldhouse. It’s also true that Ms. Jordan has attended at least one of the master planning committee meetings. So, I don’t really put this on her and Basin Rec.

What it highlights is one of the fundamental issues that is plaguing the school’s Master Planning Committee. There seems to be such a rush to get to a bond, that a well thought out process isn’t being used. It’s true the committee has been meeting for over 9 months but this type of decision making often takes two to three years.

It seems to me that the school’s Master Planning Committee should simply decide if the school district has a need for a fieldhouse, community center, tennis courts, soccer fields, etc. Then they should go to the appropriate agency and work with them to put the optimal thing in the optimal place. In the case of the fieldhouse, maybe the school district decides they really have a need for one. They could then work with Basin Rec to decide whether a small fieldhouse in town or an expansive one in Silver Creek makes more sense.

Instead what we may get is a small fieldhouse, crammed on to Kearns, that only works for the school and a big fieldhouse for the community in a more centrally located area. Oh, and the community will likely have to pay for both through bonds.

Please school district… just slow down and include others in some of these decisions. If it takes three years that’s OK. Let’s just do it right.

Tonight the School District is holding their final public meeting on rebuilding the Kearns campus and moving Treasure Mountain Junior High next to Ecker Hill Middle School. If you want to attend, the meeting is at 6PM at the High School. If you can’t make it, I’ll be live blogging the show meeting.

Word has it that the Master Planning Committee members, who have an interest in the sports side of things, are trying to ensure the “Athletic Parents” come to the meeting and voice their opinions. There has been a push during recent Master Planning Committee meetings to limit adding some new athletic facilities (like an indoor field house and rebuilding Dozier field). During previous meetings, major pushback has come from residents around the school who are concerned with the impact of the proposed athletic facilities. So, it appears some committee members are trying to level the conversation.

I personally think having athlete’s parent show up is a good thing. Everyone should have a chance to share their opinion.

Yet, it also dovetails into something that the school district’s planning company (VCBO) said during the last meeting… sports sells [school] bonds, not education.

I guess tonight we’ll see if there are different people who are buying what the school district is selling.