The Park Record is doing a disservice to our new High School Principal

We were excited to see that a new Principal was hired for Park City High School. As of August 2018, Roger Arbabi will become the new Principal at PCHS. What we gather from the Park Record article was that Mr Arbabi currently is an Administrator in the country of Colombia. He has 25 years teaching Science and Physics. He and his family have vacationed here for years. He is also fluent in English, Spanish, and Farsi.

That’s it from the Park Record article. Thanks guys.

To us, he sounds like a great guy. His background is unusual and likely offers a lot of real world experience.

So, don’t get us wrong. The upcoming rant isn’t about Mr Arbabi. We look forward to meeting him and hope he brings a diversity never before seen in Park City to the position.

Our rant is about the Park Record. Does the Park Record know our community anymore? They basically trotted out an article stating that the replacement for the head of our top-ranked school (PCHS) is a guy who is a Principal in a Columbian school who has 25 years teaching experience in Science. WTF?

This didn’t give us enough information.

Frankly, we get more analysis from ESPN on the 64th best team in the NCAA March Madness tournament.

We decided to look Mr Arbabi up on LinkedIn. This simple search told us that Mr Arbabi worked at Gransbury ISD in Texas for three years. What we aren’t sure of is whether the Park Record is trying to discredit Mr Arbabi by not mentioning his 3 years as an “Administrator” at Gransbury ISD Texas (2010-2013) or whether they are concerned with his background.

In order to figure out what was actually happening, we had to listen to an interview with Mr Arbabi on KPCW. We learned he was born in Dallas, TX. We learned that he lived in Iran from age 7-14 (his mother is Iranian and his father from the US and they moved during the Iranian Revolution). We learned he had lived in Texas for 9 years (as teacher and Administrator) and he and his wife were looking for an adventure.  They applied for international jobs and received a job in Colombia. He has been there for 5 years.About a year ago he and his wife decided move to Park City and wanted to find a way to make it work. He wanted live here and was looking for work (from substitute teacher on upwards).  Then the High School Principal position came available and he applied for that.

What we like in his interview on KPCW is the following… Leslie Thatcher asked, “What will you bring to Park City High School?” His response was that it was a challenge to follow in the footsteps of the former Principal Bob O’Connor and Dr Einhorn and current staff represented “an amazing place to be.” He said he wanted to accessible and approachable. He wanted Park City to be a safe place to be for teachers.

We wish all the best for Mr Arbabi. We hope he is great. Our theory is that it’s all about execution. Hopefully he will execute well.

For the Park Record; however, they appear to be trying to execute but aren’t doing a great job.If someone reads their article, it is practically setting up the new Principal to fail. In 30 seconds of searching we found additional info that wasn’t included. In 10 minutes of talking to the man, KPCW shed some light on who Mr Arbabi is.

The Park Record did none of this.

If they aren’t going to do this on something as important as the new Park City High School Principal, you have to question everything about it. If they endorse a candidate or write an editorial, that’s great. Is it based on the same 24 seconds of research? Probably.

We’re starting to wonder if perhaps KPCW should just provide a daily transcript and call that a paper. We think it would be more informative.

It’s not been a good day for the Park Record. Frankly, it’s not been a good month or two.

Update: Thanks to the person who caught our spelling issue