I was 18 years old and standing in line for my high school diploma. It was graduation night and I was standing next to one of my friends, Tim. I’ll never forget the moment when Earl G. got his diploma and the stands erupted with cheers and clapping. Earl may now be a fine member of whatever community he ended up in, but back then he was a bully… a very popular bully. He spent more time in detention than class. At one moment he would be hitting your books out of your hand and in the next moment trying to stuff you into your locker. He was a “model” student.

Yet here he was getting more applause than everyone else combined up to that point. I turned to Tim and said, “wow, I wish I got that sort of attention.” Tim, who looked a lot like Paul Pfeiffer from the Wonder Years, stared at me in that “you just don’t get it” sort of way. Finally he opens his mouth and says, “For some people this will be the biggest night of their entire lives. That’s high school.”

That’s sort of how I feel about PC CAPS.

PC CAPS, for those who haven’t heard of it, is a three year old program that enables students to get real-world experience. Students work on a specified project for a company — and often in teams. It is a program that is adapted from a similar program called Blue Valley CAPS, in Overland Park, Kansas. To be completely fair, the program was awarded a STEM Excellence award earlier this year, so it is doing something right.

Yet, I wonder what it really does for kids and at what cost. According the PC CAPS website it says, “At PCCAPS our goal is to fast-forward students over college into their area of professional interest by giving them real-world project experience for real companies.”  That seems to imply that somehow this program is going to be useful in getting a job after college. Imagine an 18 year old working on a marketing campaign for a local company or even go bigger and imagine them doing that for a company like Adobe or EBay (in Salt Lake). When they graduate from college 5 years later will they even remember what they did on that project? More importantly would a recruiter from a company like Proctor and Gamble, or Nationwide Insurance, or Facebook, or Google care what someone did in high school?

That takes me back to my quote from my friend Tim. Those people who live in high school, mainly administrators, probably place a higher value on this program than anyone else. You also look at other factors a post-college recruiter may look at. If a college graduate actually put this on their resume and a recruiter actually asked about it, what questions might she ask?

1. “Tell me about the project.” You are going to describe how you worked in teams and with a real company to do something. My response would be that if you haven’t done a ton of that in your 5 years in college, you aren’t even going to get that job interview.
2. “How did you get this internship?” Yes, they will call it an internship, because that’s what it seems like. You’ll respond that you took a course and they found a job match for you. Would you have been better off hitting the pavement and trying to get that internship with Overstock.com on your own? It would be a better story to tell.
3. “Did you work onsite at the company with professionals”. You would answer, well usually we worked in the school library and our mentors would come there. That’s going to seem even more like it’s just another high school class to a recruiter.

Those questions could go on and on. The point is that if you are going to college, you’ll get most of these experiences during your tenure there. You also will want to actually talk about those and not what you did when you were in high school.

So, what’s PC CAPS good for? The best use it probably to try to help get into college and there could be merit there. PC CAPS could give students something to write about in an essay. It might also give them a recommendation from a person they worked with on a project. However, those things are probably possible to get through working a traditional internship as well.

The question is whether that is spending money wisely. To accomplish that goal they’ve been renting out space for the program and now are spending up to $200,000 to renovate the high school’s library for the program to make a temporary home.  When they rebuild the high school they will construct space for the program. Budgets have been running about $450,000 per year and they need to add another partial FTE to the program. That’s real money being spent that could be used on more teachers, smaller classroom sizes, etc.

Instead, in my view, the money is being used a “neat” program that is probably a lot of fun but may be questionable value. In a few years I could be proven wrong. There could be students who comes back and says that PC CAPS got them their jobs at Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft and the PROGRAM MUST CONTINUE. I’ll believe that when I see it.

If you have a few minutes, I would recommend listening to this Bloomberg Radio interview with a well known author and recruiter. It was eye opening for me.  Who would have known being a taxi driver may help you get a better job than having a string of college internships.

Recruiter interview – Bloomberg Radio

I received a comment from a reader about School Superintendent, Dr Ember Conley’s, appearance on KPCW on Monday. The reader said:

“On KPCW this am PCSD supt. Ember Conley was asked several questions about the potential conflict of interest with VCBO Architects running the planning process and then being the architectural firm for the design/construction of the project. Either she didn’t understand the clearly stated questions or she dodged the questions.”

I decided to go back and listen to the portion of interview related to the rebuilding of the Kearns Campus. Below is a transcript. I believe there seems to be some deflection going on… on many topics. That said, you should give it a read and decide for yourself.

I’d also encourage you to go listen to the interview on the KPCW website. They now post most “Local News Hour” broadcasts online.

Here is the transcript (to the best of my ability):

Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): The district or VCBO is moving forward with scheme 3. This would build a 5/6 school at Ecker. It would demolish the district office, Treasure Mountain Junior High, Relocate the track and field and football stadium to the east end of the campus. So, this is has really got to be the expensive scenario?

Ember Conley (School Superintendent): They have started pulling some numbers together and I anticipate to be able to look at those this week. The Master Planning Committee is doing a report. We finished our 3rd workshop for Master Planning and basically putting all of the input we have gathered from our stakeholders into a schematic for that. It is still very moldable and bendable and looking at the process we’ve used to engage our stake holders and how many different people we have that have been part of Master Planning, not just small a small group that has been part of the steering committee, that we really do have an organic and authentic initial plan that I would stress that this is… we are still in the initial stages to look at what that plan looks like for Kearns BLVD.

Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): I guess with the demolition of more buildings in the scenario that means that it will need to be rebuilt. Then talking about moving the stadium itself.

Ember Conley (School Superintendent): That’s massive.

Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): I’ve heard up to a million dollars that we spent on Dozier filed [already].

Ember Conley (School Superintendent): I know that we did an update on Dozier recently. I would say that there are so many possibilities with Kearns and as we look at Treasure Mountain Junior High we know that we have to do something. I would say that demolishing of any building at this point is a ways out just because right now we have got to be able to utilize the buildings to their capacity until we get our 5/6 building built that really is…we need to expand our high school for our students and courses and look at where we are going to put our 5/6 building and everything else will be under that umbrella.

Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): At one time, we talked about putting the high school at the PRI property at Kimball Junction where the Tech park is currently being built. If we were really to look outside the box, especially since the most of growth is taking place in the Snyderville Basin, should we take a look at that?

Ember Conley (School Superintendent): That has been a discussion topic of our Master Planning Committee from day one as far as what do we have available, where should we look at expanding. I would say in working directly with the city, there’s been such a great partnership with the city and …and … and our county I don’t want it to make it sound like we don’t have a great partnership with them. The campus on Kearns really does bring value to Park City municipal and to our our residents in Park City. So, there has been a conscious effort for us to keep the high school there along with our sporting facilities. That certainly is not to say that as we look at properties that we have elsewhere, of course you know we have bear hollow.. we have a parcel out at Silver Creek, we know that those are opportunities where we can be outside of Park City Municipal boundaries and into the Snyderville Basin.The other one we said that I wasn’t aware of, and now have become acutely aware of, is the space we have at Ecker and the flexibility that we have to expand to expand at that location anywhere from putting 5/6 there o expanding the aquatic center when the time comes. We have some nice pieces of property.

Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): So the price tag thrown around last week was upwards of $100 million. When do you get firm number. When do you decide whether we go forward with a bond in November’s election?

Ember Conley (School Superintendent): The June deadline is coming up for the bond and as you throw out the $100 million, I would say that that is the “dream” price tag. We know that the most immediate is a 5/6 school which runs about $20 million right now. So, that’s our estimate. We’ve worked with our internal business as well as VCBO and some outside estimates. So, as we look at the 5/6 school and we look at the expansion of the high school, and I’m talking facility and not football field, tennis courts, etc., etc. We are probably talking about $15 million because of the amount we need to do. So, you are looking, and I’m throwing rough numbers out, it definitely isn’t the $100 million price tag there.

Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): The reality though…going forward with the bond. 65% of the money will come from tax payers who don’t have the opportunity to vote. They are second home owners or business owners who live outside the school district boundaries. Isn’t that taxation without representation?

Ember Conley (School Superintendent): I disagree. We do have added value because of our excellent School District. When you look at why people …even if second homes..why they come here. Park City is know for its excellent education that we provide and …in a public venue which is unheard of across the nation, what we do. I would say that also we add value also to what we offer from anywhere from our aquatic center at Ecker I bring that up because it’s used by community to our fields, which are joint with our city. We are willing to share the property.

Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): Is it a conflict of interest having VCBO in all of this.

Ember Conley (School Superintendent): They have a contract with the District to do the planing or do the actual drawing. Once a decision is decided upon. I would say we were meticulous in researching this with our attorneys. And We received thee different opinions form Legal and they all came back that with the process we used to engage VCBO…the process we engaged for planners, we’ve been right on… Todd Hauber has been instrumental in making sure we followed the process specifically for securing through procurement and making sure there is no grey in VCBO.

Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): So they have been hired as just planners at this point

Ember Conley (School Superintendent): Right. They were hired for the planners in this process of master planning. In addition it is important to know that we have construction that goes on throughout the year. From remodels of classrooms… I mean..maintenance … and so we have gone through the procurement process and we have a contract that is ongoing with an architect and they have been the architect that has been chosen through he process. So, it’s very clear and there is no grey area.

Leslie Thatcher (KPCW): So, this wouldn’t be put out for an RFP to get the best bid.

Ember Conley (School Superintendent): So, the next process we have to engage in is…so as you know we have engaged in the financial and we have to look at even proposing a bond and then the next one is for construction and I have learned so much from Sean Morgan and Rory Murphy with their background in planning. I was always under the impression that it was very linear. So, the next process is pulling in a construction company.

A quick note about something I heard last night. The Park City School Board Master Planning Committee discussed the High School library changes that were being put in place for PC CAPS. I had been under the assumption that this was a long term place for PC CAPS to live. It appears that assumption was wrong.

My assumption came from the meeting notes of the School Board meeting that approved up to $200,000 for renovations on the library related to PC CAPS needs and a Park Record article that starts, “The Park City Board of Education’s recent decision to allow the district to renovate the high school media center means the Park City Center for Advanced Professional Studies will have a home for next year and the foreseeable future.”

As often happens with school board meetings, it just seemed as if the decision to make the PC CAPS use of the building temporary, came out of thin air. The spin provided by board members was that the changes being made to the library are what’s best in the long-term for students and PC CAPS is just a temporary user of that new design.

I ‘ll be digging more into this later but wanted you to be aware of the change in plans, if you weren’t already.

On Wednesday night, the Park City School Board Master Planning Committee (also called Steering Committee) voted to postpone providing a recommendation to the school board on a bond for the new Kearns campus. Many thought the school board would vote on the bond in June but now it appears that decision will come a few months later.

The committee noted that the delay will give them more time to understand costs, reach out to the community, and finalize plans, but the reason really seemed to stem from the fact that they had run out of time this school year. There were only two school board meetings left and more time was likely needed to get everything in place.

So look for more discussions this summer and a vote by your board members in the middle of August.

On Wednesday evening I live blogged the Park City School District’s Master planning Committee meeting.

Please forgive misspellings, grammar, etc as it moved pretty quickly.

(more…)

You may have heard that the Park City School District has plans to renovate its Kearns campus. What started out with a School Board Master Planning Committee formed to decide whether to rebuild Treasure Mountain Junior High has morphed into… something else. As part of that process, three meetings were held with community members to discuss the master planning process. It culminated in four scenarios, presented by the architecture firm VCBO.

During the final meeting, these four scenarios were presented. Out of that meeting we have heard multiple times (on KPCW) that the community has selected the design they would like to move forward with. This gives the impression that THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN and THE PEOPLE DEMAND Scenario 3. I would be remiss right now if I didn’t mention that Scenario 3 was likely the grandest of the options. Some might call it (and I think they have called it) the kitchen sink.

Yes, it is true that in the final community master planning meeting that the majority of people who made a vote selected the kitchen sink. They did this by placing stickers on the scenario that they liked best. How many people out of all the residents in the Park City School District selected this option as the ideal one? 15. Fifteen. Quince.

So, 15 people, out of 40-50 at the meeting, out of 20,000 in the District selected this option. Let’s then delve into that populace:

How many of these people were on the existing school board Master Planning Committee that had been pushing for this during previous meetings? No idea … but there were at least 5 of those people in attendance who may have placed #1 stickers.

Was this in any way scientific or representative? Of course not. Different people attended each of the 3 different meetings. I would say that teachers, administrators, and Master Planning committee members made up well more than the majority (I could be wrong on that but I would guess not).

Were costs addressed or factored in by community members? No (a community member asked about that during the meeting but was told costs would be looked at later).

I realize that this is “how things are done.” Meetings are held with the public so that it can be said that public input was obtained. However, please don’t try to use that as marketing material.

To those who are reading this, if you walked up to a random Parkite on the street and said, “so are you for the School District’s plan to use Scenario 3 to rebuild Kearns Campus?”… Would they say:

A. Yes

B. No

C. Huh?

I don’t begrudge people for not knowing about the project yet. However, don’t tell me that the people are in favor of any plan. Most people don’t know there is one.