The new high school that Wasatch County School District is constructing is well underway to being complete and, according to district officials, is on track to be finished in time to open for fall 2026.

Compared to an earlier look at the building given to representatives from different media groups in late last year, a similar tour taken with district officials last week showed that what had resembled a group of organized foundations last winter has now been solidified into the barebones of the current Wasatch High School.

An orchestra pit in the ground has been built into an auditorium, concretes and rebar have become a building and sections of the site have been worked into classrooms, shops and lecture halls within the last several months. Several components still remain to be finished — the auditorium, while recognizable, still needs a roof — but it’s coming along. And, according to Kirsta Albert, the district’s public information officer, it’s doing so within its anticipated timeline of completion and still expected to open in time for the 2026-27 school year. 

According to Superintendent Paul Sweat, the building’s resemblance to Wasatch County High School is no coincidence. He explained the same architectural design is being used, though with differences that came at the behest of teachers and other school staff who were given the opportunity to bend the district’s ear about things they think could improve.

That process gave birth to the current Wasatch High School design, which he said has been used by three other school districts around the state.

“Seventy percent of this building is patterned after the current Wasatch High. It’s the same architect, which helped us a lot,” he said. “Some of the components have been moved around. There’s a few things we changed, and we learned something living there for 14 years, some things that needed to change and that we wanted to change.” 

Still, he emphasized that just as the district was willing to tear a page from its book, it was willing to stick with the aspects of its buildings that had proved faithful to their students’ needs. Walking around the new site, he looked at sections of the building and recalled how similar they were to Wasatch County’s old high school, one he worked at as principal that’s been torn down for years.

One aspect of construction within the district that he pointed out was officials’ willingness to listen to teachers and principals rather than only administrators and final decision-makers.

“The standard in most districts is any time you let the principal and the teachers get involved, it just adds money to the process and drags it down,” he said. “We spent a lot of time with (Architect Curtis Livingston) at the old high school on 6th South talking about these types of issues.”

In the new school’s shop, he pointed out long bays built into the room’s walls. These, he explained, came from the district being willing to listen to their employees when the district went to construct Wasatch High School.

He said teachers came to the district with concerns that their shop material would sometimes arrive 40 feet long, making it impossible to haul it through hallways into the shop without getting stuck around corners.

“This was designed so it would come right off the truck,” Sweat said. “Then as it comes into the shop, it’s cut to order for whatever project it’s being made for.”

There are even differences between the two high schools. One, for example, is the new school’s focus on its common area and making sure the school is centralized. With the exception of classes that will be held at the school’s separate athletic center, most parts of the school will be built around the large centralized area. The lunch room itself will also serve as an overflow to the commons to allow room for more students.

“That’s one of the great things about plans,” Sweat said. “It’s made to draw the kids back to the center of the school at every pastime. So the kids come in, it’s easier to keep an eye on them and supervise them. And as big a campus as that is, you can pop back into the commons area and then go in any direction from there. It’s pretty functional that way.” 

Another change students and their families will see at the new high school will hopefully save some parents from having to pick a favorite child when the day comes that their different basketball games or wrestling matches happen on different courts at the same time in the athletic center’s auxiliary gyms.

The courts will be positioned so spectators can get a view of both gyms simultaneously.

“That’s one thing we did a little differently,” Sweat said. Instead of having two auxiliary gyms totally separate, there would be two in here, and you can sit on the bleachers and see both gyms,” Sweat said. “We have a lot of families that will have a girl playing on the JV team and maybe a freshman playing on the boy’s team, and they might be playing at the same time in two different gyms over at the other school.”

The district began construction on the high school in May 2023. According to an analysis released last year by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, Wasatch County is expected to grow rapidly in the coming decades while other areas of the state are expected to stagnate or even shrink in student enrollment.

Wasatch County’s enrollment is predicted to increase by about 4,000 students, and the new high school is just one of the many projects on the district’s master plan list. 

The post New Wasatch County high school construction continues appeared first on Park Record.

While schools across the state and country struggle to get students up to the standards they were meeting before the COVID-19 pandemic, Wasatch County School District and Park City School District have managed to not only make up lost ground but also surpass their 2019 standings.

The Utah State Board of Education released its 2024 student proficiency data based on two standardized tests: the Readiness Improvement Success Empowerment given to third-eighth graders and the Utah Aspire Plus administered to students in grades nine and 10.  

In 2019 — the school year before the COVID-19 pandemic — students’ test scores throughout the state showed that 47% were proficient in English language arts, 45% in mathematics and 46.6% in science. 

In 2021 — the year after the worst of the pandemic and the effects it had on schools and students — had passed, its effects on education were noticeable. The proficiency rates had dropped to 43.3%, 39.2% and 44.1%, respectively.

While Park City School District and Wasatch County School District stayed a cut above average both before and after the pandemic, neither community was immune to the proficiency-dropping effects the vast majority of districts throughout the state and country faced. 

In 2019, Park City’s students tested to be 54.3% proficient in English language arts, 50.5% in math and 54.1% in science. In 2021, those numbers changed — most notably math proficiency — to 54.5%, 46% and 53.3%, respectively.

In neighboring Wasatch County, students’ 2019 test scores scored proficiencies of 51.6% in English language arts, 46.2% in math and 49.8% in science. In 2021, those proficiency rates became 50.4%, 45.7% and 44.4%.

Regardless of the pandemic, both of the largest districts in the Wasatch Back also continue to improve their proficiency numbers.

According to the newest reports, Park City’s tests taken in 2024 show 61.8% of students were proficient in English language arts, 56.2% in math and 65.5% in science.

In Wasatch, test results showed students were 59.3% sufficient in English language arts, 56.7% in math and 55% in science. 

Despite obvious adjustments that the district had to make due to the pandemic, Wasatch County Superintendent Paul Sweat attributed the district’s success in the situation to using technology efficiently, implementing as few changes as possible and keeping kids in school buildings when possible.

Similarly, Park City officials also worked to maintain in-person learning as much as possible.

The post Park City and Wasatch County schools continue upward after pandemic bounce back appeared first on Park Record.

Wasatch County School District has figured out that just because summer must come to an end doesn’t mean fun has to as well. Its schools welcomed each age group Monday morning for their first day back with music, style and cheer.

The school year started bright and early Monday morning at Timpanogos Middle School, where the district brought in a band of bagpipers — the Salt Lake Scots — to help students live up to their Highlander mascots as they arrived.

Gordon Atkin, a member of the group, lives in Heber Valley near the school and said the annual opportunity has become a fun event for the kilt-clad clan ever since the school’s principal, Jim Judd, reached out a handful of years ago.

“I was able to convince our band to come up and make this part of our annual gigs that we do every year,” he said. “Bagpipes, they have a way of just grabbing your attention because they’re so loud. So I think the noise grabs the kids’ attention, and because it’s become an annual thing, I think kids recognize that it’s not just about coming to school, but it’s about a new start as well.”

The traditional, powerful blast of music did make the mundane procedure of kids walking from their parents’ cars into the building feel more meaningful, more serene.

Judd took note. He told Atkin the band’s presence changes the atmosphere and, consequently, the outlook on the school year.

“Most of us didn’t realize that the name of the mascot was the Highlanders,” Atkin said. “It’s nice to tie the bagpipes to the mascot of the school.”

While Atkin and his band bagged and piped away, the youngest group of students that will attend Wasatch County High School — the freshmen — shuffled through the doors and into the thrills and anxieties of high school.

Though Monday was the first day of school in the district, the sophomores, juniors and seniors get an extra day added onto their break. Monday was all about the freshmen, and the high school’s staff and student leaders guided them into the auditorium when they arrived.

Principal Justin Kelly took to the stage and — with more energy than most could muster before 9 a.m. — showed them the school’s song, though his rendition focused on volume and force to perhaps the expense of melody.

The students didn’t seem to mind, rising from their seats and echoing the nearly indiscernible words back to their principal with enthusiasm that rivaled his, but never matched it.

From there, they were sectioned off into different groups and led to different areas of the school to become familiar with what Wasatch High has to offer before they share the halls with upperclassmen. 

Logan Ritchie, now a member of the student council who helped freshmen around the school, reflected on when he was in their shoes a few years ago.

“It’s weird because I remember the nerves I was feeling the first day, and now you come and you realize everyone’s here to help you,” he said. “Enjoy the time, because it goes by fast, and the next thing you know you’re a senior going through it all again. Just enjoy the time and don’t overthink it.”

Ryan Bishop, the school’s assistant principal, said the freshmen-only day is important to make sure students know what opportunities they have as well as get acquainted with the school in general.

“We think it’s so important for our freshmen to start their four years in high school off on the right foot,” he said. “It gives them that day to get some of the nervousness out and look really forward to the next four years, and we love doing it.”

He also had a piece of advice for freshmen starting their high school careers: Whether lunch-time activities, sports or something else, get involved.

“We have tons of different things at Wasatch High,” he said.

And while freshmen were getting acquainted with the beginning of the end of their pre-collegiate education, little kids Heber Valley Elementary started out with smiles and their own butterflies.

The school had literally laid out the red carpet for their arrival, as well as set up several photo opportunities near the entrance.

Principal Katie Cummings said it’s a tradition that goes back further than her four years at the school.

“Everyone has the butterflies and feels a little nervous, so when you come and see something exciting, it helps those butterflies feel like it’s for a good purpose,” she said. “Those butterflies mean excitement, not scared.”

The photo spots, she said, also provide a nice place where parents can take a fun photo of their kids before they bid them a happy farewell.

“One little girl this morning was like, ‘Is the queen coming?’” Cummings said with a smile. “I said, ‘You’re the queen today!’”

The post Wasatch County School District begins school year with music, style appeared first on Park Record.

Normally when the folks of Heber City fill the stands of a school gymnasium to watch asses play basketball, it means one of the school’s rivals is in town. On Thursday evening, it meant something different. 

In a fundraising event to sponsor scholarships for members of the school district’s Future Farmers of America members, Rocky Mountain Middle School’s gym was filled with donkeys topped with students and teachers who were ready for the challenge of shooting hoops from the back of an animal infamous for living to the beat of its own drum. 

The event — organized by Wasatch County School District’s FFA members in conjunction with their peers in the Future Business Leaders of America — started at 6 p.m., when the donkeys first entered the middle school’s gymnasium to the glee, delight, excitement and shock of the onlookers in the mostly filled stands and still-filling stands.

Attendees continued to look on in amazement and scrunch their noses at the various agriculture smells when — as if to prove its authenticity as an actual animal — one of the donkeys came near the bleachers to stop off for a quick number two, which was subsequently scooped away. Out of sight, out of mind, so long as one didn’t have a sense of smell.

Still, it was all in good fun, and it was all for a good cause.

There were three games in all, each with two halves ranging from 6-8 minutes and with a different set of riders for each half. First the FFA students rode against their FBLA cohorts. Then, core subject teachers faced elective instructors. The final round featured the winners of the first two, with the top two teams entering into a March Madness-like final showdown of an equine variety.

Kody Clyde, an Agricultural Science teacher at Wasatch High School, explained how the FFA is an important component in the district’s agricultural program.

“Everybody who’s in an FFA class is an FFA member,” he said. “FFA is an organization that takes learning outside of the classroom and applies it in real life.”

This component of the program manifests itself in a variety of projects that can range from raising animals to growing crops to building agricultural equipment.

The association, Clyde said, helps kids develop leadership skills.

“We’ll see kids who are afraid to stand up in front of people,” he explained. “By the end of their four years, they’re leading discussions.”

FBLA State Advisor Duke Di Stefano — who is also an assistant principal at Rocky Mountain Middle School — described the business leaders group in a similar manner, emphasizing how it gives experiences that promote strong leadership skills within its members. 

One opportunity both FFA and FBLA students had Thursday evening was to prove the other group inferior in the first match of the donkey-straddled basketball, a task that proved difficult at every step of the game. 

Players could get off their asses to retrieve a stray ball, though they needed to keep hold of the reins. In order to shoot or pass the ball, they needed to be atop the animals. For some riders on the vertically smaller side, this proved tricky as soon as the game started because the thin saddles meant to separate them from their animal counterparts had no stirrups nor horns with which they could hoist themselves up. It was, however, quickly proven that anyone with the guts to ride in a rampage of donkeys and glory to get balls through hoops had what it took to first get on a donkey.

Wasatch High Principal Justin Kelly sat at the announcer’s bench, providing narration and playful peanut-gallery commentary alike throughout the game.

“Come on, let’s get it!” he called out a few minutes, several switchovers and more than a couple air balls into the game. “Someone’s got to score!”

FBLA students eventually heeded his call to action and ended the first half 4-0. 

The team’s second-half riders couldn’t keep the momentum, however, and the FBLA fell to the FFA in a sudden-death overtime.

The second game followed a similar pace to the first, with donkeys not being the most willing animals to move and not the fastest, even if they are given sufficient motivation to do so. That, however, did little to cool the tension between the two groups of teachers — one with subjects that kids had to take, and one they chose to take. 

Ultimately, the core teachers took the game, in no small part due to physics and engineering teacher Jonathon Welling, who somehow managed to kneel on his donkey on his approaches to the basket, lending to his accuracy, which proved deadly to the elective teachers’ chances of a spot in the finals — even if it did cost him a few bumps and bruises when he spilled over the side of the animal.

During the small tournament’s halftime, or two-thirds time to be more accurate, Heber City’s Utah Arts Collective dancers took to the center of the gym to perform a number for the spectators and — in what can only be described as a daring move — put their faces unfathomably close to where the donkeys and all of their associated scents had trod only moments before.

Then it was time for the finale, and the FFA students once again took up their donkeys to face the challenging foes.

The two teams were about as stubborn as their donkeys, each not letting the other get too far ahead before evening the score.

In the last seconds, the teachers made a final shot, schooling the FFA kids the same way they school them in primary subjects.

“That’s the game! That is the game. Our teachers pulled it off in sudden victory,” Kelly announced. “Let’s hear it for our donkeys. They’re tired.”

Kash Cummings — a rider for the effortful, yet ultimately unsuccessful FFA team — talked to The Park Record about his experiences in the program, what he’s learned and how he’s hoping to be a state FFA officer next year after he graduates.

“I grew up on a farm. My dad actually had a dairy farm his whole life, so we’re still on that farm, kind of a family generation thing,” he said. “FFA means a lot to me just because it’s the future of agriculture throughout the world.”

Without agricultural fields, he continued, there wouldn’t be food. 

Throughout his time in FFA, he said he’s learned the importance of being a helpful hand to those in need and prioritizing friendship.

“This is a cool event where we have a lot of people coming to support our students, but this is just one thing that happens throughout the year,” Kelly said. “This is all student-led, and that’s what I think is important.”

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Matt McNaughtan drove away from Daniels Canyon Elementary in Heber City early Monday morning — his minivan full of donated books he didn’t believe would fit had he left the seat in — and headed toward Bluff Elementary School in San Juan County.

Generous families with students attending Daniels Canyon donated the books, as well as women involved in the Widows of Wasatch County organization, and the books were on their way to kids and families who hail from very different socioeconomic backgrounds.

The schools are only 318 miles apart, but the chasm between them is much greater.

In the San Juan School District, Matt explained, it’s not uncommon for students to have to worry about amenities or basic living conditions most kids in the Wasatch County School District never have to think about. 

“It’s just a different game,” he explained. “Some of these kids … they truck the water in. They don’t have running water to their homes, or electricity. Some of them might live far enough off that they might have electricity, but they’ve got to gas up their generator.”

The first day he worked at Bluff Elementary, teachers were visiting their students at home. They took bags of flour. 

According to a Sep. 2023 study published by the Utah Department of Workforce Services, San Juan County has the highest rates of both adults and children experiencing intergenerational poverty. 

In 2022, that meant 35.4% of children in the county experienced intergenerational poverty. 55.8% were at risk of being in that situation.

Comparatively, less than 3% of Wasatch County’s children experienced intergenerational poverty at that time, and less than 15% are at risk.

Matt has only worked at Bluff Elementary for about a month. He was hired as a student success coach through a grant, but he was told early on he was to wear many hats. He works as a liaison between the school and parents and oversees several programs to encourage and promote reading.

Monday’s book drive was born out of a conversation he was having with his brother Dave McNaughtan, the principal at Daniels Canyon.

“I was talking with him about what his thoughts were, what programs worked and how I just want to flood these kids with books,” Matt said. “I mentioned how some of these kids have to ride on a bus for an hour just to come to school and they’re coming great distances. … He said, ‘Oh, you should have books on the bus.'”

Matt loved the idea.

“If they’re sitting on the bus anyway, if there’s books right in front of them, there’s a better chance that they’ll read them. And so that kind of like was the birth of asking for this book drive,” he said. “We’re working now to get book pouches put on the back of the bus seats so that the kids will just have them sitting there, easily accessible.”

If a kid gets to their stop and they want the book or haven’t finished reading it, Matt said they can take it with them.

Even if the stories sit unread for long stretches of time, at least there’s a possibility and an opportunity for kids to eventually find their way between the pages.

“That’s just what we’re after,” he said. “I can guarantee there’s a better chance that that kid’s going to open up a book with a stack of books there than no books at all. So it’s a gateway.”

For one week, Dave ran a book drive. He said it wasn’t hugely advertised, that he just sent an email to parents letting them know about the effort.

He said that — coupled with the three or four boxes from Widows of Wasatch — resulted in “a ton of books.”

“He filled his minivan,” Dave said. “He took all the seats out and we filled the back of his minivan. … If I were guessing, I would say it had to have been in the thousands.”

This, he emphasized, was just one of the district’s five elementary schools. The brothers are already considering a larger-scale drive, but Matt said he must first find homes for all of the books that filled his minivan just from a one-week, one-school effort.

“I am sure I’m going to share with other elementaries, possibly even one of the health clinics down in Monument Valley,” Matt said.

Dave explained how socioeconomically disadvantaged kids often aren’t exposed to the same amount of words as kids who come from wealthier positions. Books, he said, can play a vital role in establishing their vocabularies and background knowledge.

“The world experience is just hugely different, and so we can provide the experience,” he said. “They always say if you want to see the world, read a book. That’s the opportunities we’re trying to provide these kids.”

Dave emphasized how much the successful book drive speaks toward the community of Wasatch County and their willingness to help others. 

Matt said he is extremely grateful.

“Everyone’s been so willing to help,” Matt said. “I can’t thank them enough.” 

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Mia Walker is a storyteller.

She loves to read — she reads around 100 books a year — and she’s written a few books herself, though they have yet to meet a publisher’s pen.

She’s passionate about telling her story — a story she said is often misrepresented, overlooked or treated as a side plot in many stories told by authors who don’t understand her experience.

As a blind senior attending Wasatch High School, she’s had to tell her story several times, and not just within the pages of her fiction.

“I guess I would consider myself an activist for disability rights and being able to talk about that and to advocate for myself and other disabled people,” she said. “My goal is to share my story and others’ stories so that people are more aware of disability.”

The beginning of that story predates her, she explained, and goes back to when her mother, Merrie Walker, had to advocate for her older brother who is blind just so he could attend school without a long bus ride for a young child. He was 7 at the time.

“It was more than two hours,” Merrie said. “So it would be two and a half hours there, two and a half hours back.” 

The challenges the family faced with the education system came early.

“They basically told him that he was never going to be able to learn to read Braille and that he should just listen to books on tape,” Mia said. “My mom was not going to just settle for that. She knew that he could succeed.”

His rocky path paved a smoother way for Mia, and helped her find her early enthusiasm for reading, she said.

“That kind of led me to reading a lot of books and realizing that disability in books and movies is very misrepresented,” Mia said. “I turned a certain age, and I realized that I didn’t have to just write like everyone else wrote.”

She has yet to find many stories that accurately portray the perspective of someone with a disability. As a disabled person with a love of all things storytelling, she became passionate about filling that space. 

Mia was chosen as Wasatch High School’s Sterling Scholar in the statewide academic competition’s Vocal Performance category, and she has progressed to win the regional level of the competition for Utah’s Northeast region.

In this year’s statewide Speech and Debate tournament for 5A high schools, she gave a speech inspired by Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

The performance, Merrie said, left her with an important message — it’s impossible to adequately and accurately address the harms that befall a minority group unless the messenger is a member of that minority group.

Mia said the speech was in part inspired by Amanda Leduc’s “Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space.” 

“It was the first book I had read by a disabled author that was talking about ableism and how it had affected society,” Mia said. “She talked about fairy tales and how the portrayal of disability in fairy tales was affecting the way that we were seen in real life.”

Mia called the hunchback a prime example of a character portrayal of a disabled man with pity and sorrow, but not joy.

“For some reason in this media, disability and joy don’t coexist,” Mia said. “So that was what my speech was about is having this very real example of me, a blind person who is happy and who is also sad and who is angry. And it’s just all of this humanity that’s brought to it if you have the right and the ability to tell your own story instead of just being the subject of someone else’s pity or their story.”

Recently, she had to advocate for herself to the ACT test’s governing group — also named ACT — for the same access to the exam as her peers with vision.

She had long been told of ACT’s rumored difficult stance on accommodations, its unwillingness to alter its test and test-taking resources for blind students.

Still, she said the school district fought hard for her, and after a carefully composed email, she was granted accommodating access to a calculator — otherwise, she would have had to do complex problems in her head when other kids could use a paper and pencil — and a test in Braille.

Still, not everything went smoothly. To Mia’s dismay, she opened the math section of the test to find it was written in an outdated form of Braille. She also found the science section had the same issue.

Eventually, ACT allowed Mia to retake the math and science section. Still, she wasn’t told what her updated score was and didn’t find it until she was applying for colleges about six months after she took the test.

Merrie said she’d like to see ACT offer correct choices for disabled students ordering tests that would allow them to pick the form of Braille they want to test in.

More accessible test preparation material at the beginning of a student with a disability’s junior year, she said, would also be a helpful change.

Even after all the work she put in just to receive an ACT test that was accessible and accommodating to her disability, Mia said, she still gets comments from people who say her blindness will get her into any school she wants to attend and that she receives special, favored treatment.

“That is really insulting,” Mia said. “That is not true.”

Next year, Mia will attend Brigham Young University to study English. And while her writing might not include any blue skies, one thing is clear — she won’t let her personal experience be written off as someone else’s side character.

The post Wasatch High School student who is blind explains her experience and her quest for accurate representation appeared first on Park Record.

The committee charged naming Wasatch County new high school still under construction took their flirtation with name ideas public last week when they pitched their early ideas to the school board.

Their ideas, however, are still only ideas for now.

“We are not naming the high school tonight,” district Superintendent Paul Sweat said. “This is going to be our first blush at a name with the accompanying mascot and colors for consideration.”

Before showing his hand and directly divulging the name, mascot and colors the naming committee had cooked up, Kelly started hinting at what they had thought of by delving into the history of Deer Creek State Park.

“Deer Creek State Park is the No. 1 day-use state park in the state of Utah,” he said. “Everybody knows where Deer Creek is.”

The reservoir, he added, serves 1.5 million people — almost half the state’s population — their water.

“We thought that’s kind of interesting,” he said. 

Ultimately, the name the committee pitched was, you guessed it: “Deer Creek High School.”

“Our legacy is built on our Values. They have been constant and will remain long after we have all moved on,” Kelly read on a logo beneath the proposed name. “Deer Creek Reservoir was starting construction in like 1936. It was completed in 1955, and they started using water out of it in 1942.”

Heber Valley Railroad, he said in reference to another theme that has been considered in the design of the new high school, may come and go. He said it could disappear if tourists stop riding the train.

“You’re never going to be able to get rid of Deer Creek Reservoir,” he said. “I think that’s where our legacy is going to be built with Deer Creek High School.”

He added that every stream in the valley leads into Deer Creek, just like students from different parts of the valley will pool into the new high school.

“We’re there to help mold them,” he said. “But once that water shoots out the other side through the power plant, metaphorically we want our students to go power the world.”

He also mentioned how sticking with a mountain or lake theme would give the district ample branding opportunities to name the various components of the school. If a mountain theme is chosen, the commons could be the base camp, the gym known as the cave, the hallways called passes. If the board prefers a lake feel, the school’s spillway could be the marina, the athletic facility could be the island, the main office the power plant.

“This is not set in stone, but here’s where our mind was,” he said.

The colors they pitched were silver-mine silver — a call back to Midway’s mining past — and lake blue for more obvious reasons concerning the reservoir.

The mascot would be the Mountaineers, representative of the people who found and explored the Heber Valley, second only to its native populations.

“Let’s face it, you lived in Salt Lake or Provo back in the 1800s, it was a pretty desolate place,” Kelly said. “But you come up here, it’s green meadows, pastures. I think they thought they’d died and gone to heaven coming to this place.”

The naming committee hasn’t yet decided what they want the mascot to look like. Kelly said he felt high school names carry their legacy better than their mascots.

Board members only had good things to say about what Kelly showed them, but that doesn’t mean his ideas will all be realized. The public and board now have time to ruminate on the proposal, which could be edited or even redone before an official name is chosen.

“I think we’re all realizing that naming a high school is a process,” Holmes said.

The post Naming committee considers what’s in a name for new high school in Wasatch County; a hint: where the rivers all run appeared first on Park Record.

Tom Stone decided to run for the Wasatch County School District’s Board of Education because he feels like it’s his time to do his community part.

“I love this place,” he said. “We all take turns. Someone did it for me, and I think it’s my turn to do it for someone else.”

The Wasatch High School graduate entered the race for Seat E, along with Brad Ehlert. The position is currently held by board President Tom Hansen, who did not file to run for another term after this one ends at the end of the year.

Stone, his wife and their kids have all attended the Wasatch County School District. His granddaughter is in preschool and will begin kindergarten next year.

Stone said he focuses primarily on when he was in high school and began making “real life decisions.”

He said he has been involved as a coach and volunteer for the district’s Center for Advanced Professional Studies, which he said he’s been a part of since its beginning. Considering his kids’ success, he said he feels obligated to give credit first to their mother, but then to Wasatch County High School and the district experience as a whole.

“Two of them have graduated from university and now own their own businesses. My third one is in university in a program that is exceptionally hard to get into,” he said. “My experience was very, very positive, and I want it to continue. … I’m grateful again that not only they did it for me, but people did it for my kids.”

Stone said when people notice a need for change, he believes they should be at the forefront. When his kids were in elementary school, he said he grew worried that software programs and other learning tools were taking the real-life aspects out of their learning.

“Through volunteering, I’d see these kids graduate out of the system, even go to university, and then not be able to get a job,” he said. “They’re not sure what the next steps are.”

He approached the district with his concern, and he said the CAPS program evolved from that conversation.

Students in the program are able to better understand what it’s like to operate in different professional fields when they are given the chance to work with peers to perform projects for local companies, he said Last year, Stone said there were 85 projects.

“It’s the safest place to say, ‘I’m going to try engineering. I’m going to try agriculture,'” Stone said. “What we train and teach is not necessarily skill-based. We want them to be the leaders.”

Stone helps kids interested in business create their own businesses, complete with advertised services, websites and, most importantly, clients other than their moms and grandmas.

He knows it makes high schoolers uncomfortable, and that’s the point.

“I want a child to leave high school confident,” he said. “Otherwise, they put ceilings on themselves.”

While Stone focused on expanding student opportunities to make sure kids are ready for what hits them on the other side of a graduation walk, he also mentioned his ability to look toward the fiscal standing of the school district as it grows.

“I’m a mortgage loan officer, I’m a mortgage banker, and I’ve done it for 30 years here in Wasatch County. And every fall, I get the same phone calls, not from the same people, but the same type of phone calls,” he said. “‘What just happened to my payment? I thought I had a fixed interest rate?'”

He frequently finds himself explaining to people that their taxes have increased.

“My clients that are older especially are saying four-letter expletives, not necessarily at me, but about the situation,” Stone said.

As a business property owner, he’s also seen tax expenses jump on a personal level.

“I am 100% against any tax increases,” he said.

Instead, he believes the school district should begin looking at how it can better use available resources. 

The majority of taxes, he said, goes to payroll.

“Everyone is worried about the building and the schools and stuff like that. That’s less than 8%,” he said. 

He mentioned how the school board has made it a point to pay its teachers competitively compared to other districts throughout the state.

“There’s this competition for teachers and they’ve been increasing every year quite a bit. Now on one side, you can say that’s how you get the quality into it, but it’s costing money,” he said. 

While he specified that he doesn’t want teachers to feel they are having money taken from them, he does want to look into potentially adjusting retirement benefits in order to accommodate higher salaries.

He admitted he doesn’t have all the answers, but amid enrollment growth and the need for more schools, he said such conversations will need to happen.

The post Wasatch County School District candidate Tom Stone seeks to evaluate spending, continue nontraditional learning appeared first on Park Record.

It won’t be Breanne Dedrickson’s first gig with the Wasatch County School District if she is elected as a member of the Board of Education this coming November, but it will be her first time in a policy-making role.

“This is my first time throwing my hat into the political arena,” Dedirckson said. “I was first hired in the Wasatch County School District as an English teacher — a high school English teacher — in 2007.”

It was just after she graduated from Utah State University, and was her first teaching position. She stayed for six years before receiving her master’s degree in educational leadership from the University of Utah. Since then, she’s worked as an assistant principal and is currently a part-time administrator for Liahona Preparatory Academy in Utah County.

“It’s a nice balance where I can work one day a week as an educator and then the rest of the days at home as Mom,” said Dedrickson, who has a third grader, kindergartner, soon-to-be preschooler and a not-quite-month-old infant at home. “We’re enjoying all the baby snuggles. We’re just loving it.”

As a parent with students attending the district, Dedrickson said she’s wanted to stay involved and has worked with the Wasatch Parent Network, School Community Council, Safe Schools Committee and Future Schools Committee.

Now she’s ready to try her hand as an elected representative in the district. 

“I want to ensure high academic achievement and a high quality education for my own kids and for all kids,” she said. “I’ve been involved as a parent. I’m ready to get involved as a policymaker to ensure that we continue the high academic achievement and the upward trend that Wasatch School District is on. I think it’s so impressive the things they’ve accomplished in the last few years.”

With her experience, she feels she can make important contributions.

While keeping students’ high academic achievement as her No. 1 focus, she also wants to make sure the district maintains an up-to-date, interactive curriculum and that teachers get regular professional development training.

“As a board member, you have different constituents that you’re representing. You have students, you have teachers, you have your taxpayers,” she said. “I think you do that in a fiscally responsible, transparent way.”

Looking back to the COVID-19 pandemic, she reminisced on a point of pride for the district. While most districts throughout the nation struggled to keep their students on track with online classes and remote learning strategies, kids in Wasatch County actually showed progression.

She attributed the success to the schools’ reliance on a solid curriculum, something district Superintendent Paul Sweat has also pointed to when asked about how the district managed to help kids even while school buildings were empty.

“They made sure that all kids walked out with an iPad so that their teachers could continue to contact them, so that they could have access to curriculum,” Dedrickson said. “They still had a communication line open with their teachers, and our teachers were still able to push out content and curriculum.”

That kind of solid curriculum, as well as teachers’ ability to distribute and teach it effectively — is something she wants to ensure stays in the district.

As a teacher, Dedrickson remembered being “100% supported” by administrators who had her back and made sure she had needed resources and appropriate training.

“I remember sitting with my team and looking at students that had holes in their learning and talking about how we can address that, how we can get them up to grade level,” she recalled.

There was one student in particular she remembers.

“I will never forget at the end of the year when he took the state test and I told him that he had passed,” she said. “That kid just lit up. He had the hugest smile and he gave me this huge hug and he was like, ‘I did it! Ms. D, I did it!'”

She said education goes beyond test scores, however.

“It’s not just data. That’s individual kids and that’s learning that they need to be successful in their own lives and students matter. And so I guess that’s why I’m running is I love the students in this district. I love my own kids and I want to make sure that we do what’s best for kids, but we do it in a responsible way.”

The post Former Wasatch County teacher running for school board appeared first on Park Record.

Wasatch County School District officials on Thursday showed off their new high school under construction and considered a likely future of growth while K-12 enrollment across the state is projected to decline.

Superintendent Paul Sweat referenced a recently completed analysis by University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute that shows predicted enrollment trends for school districts in Utah.

While many districts are expected to stagnate or decline in student numbers, Wasatch County almost certainly will be a big exception.

“After two decades of strong growth, enrollment projections indicate Utah’s schools will experience a period of enrollment decline,” the institute’s report states. “Projections indicate enrollment will decline 0.6% per year on average from 2023 to 2033.”

For Summit County, this means a predicted decrease of 1,199 students from 2020 to 2060. In Salt Lake County, it means a loss of 1,874 students.

But Wasatch County is expected to grow 50%, a higher rate than any other county and a projected influx of 4,050 students.

“If you realize that we only have about 7,500 students right now, that’s a really significant number,” Sweat said. “It’s not a surprise to us, but we want to make sure that people understand why we’ve been doing what we’re doing and that it’s important for our board to continue with the plan.”

Earlier this year, the school district went through Utah’s truth-in-taxation process to maintain last year’s tax rates even with increasing property values. Some public comments at the time suggested the district was out to pocket collections. District representatives said the change would be necessary to keep up with the growth of Wasatch County.

The district looks 20 years into the future to predict what updates, changes and buildings it will need to make in its Future Schools Project master plan. While its new high school is already under construction and on schedule to open in fall 2026, the plan notes the need for more facilities in the near future.

In the next five years, the district plans to replace or remodel Midway Elementary School. In the next five to 10 years, it plans to implement those plans and prepare to build a new middle school. In 10-20 years, it plans to have the middle school completed.

The policy institute, Sweat said, advised districts with anticipated growth like Wasatch County’s to make appropriate preparations.

“We thought that was an opportunity for us to remind some of you and let others know maybe for the first time that there has been some robust activity taking place in Wasatch County School District,” he said.

And as the district builds its plan for the future, construction is well underway on the yet-to-be-named high school.

Though it may not look like much to the uninformed eye, the blocks, cement and rebar poured and laid at 1000 W 100 S in Heber City will soon be a school campus where the next generations of Midway and rural Wasatch County areas will graduate.

“You want to build a school where the kids live,” Sweat said. “The boundaries haven’t been decided yet, but primarily it’s going to be the west side of Heber City, Midway and then other areas of this county.”

Sweat said while the school won’t be constructed out of the cheapest materials available, the district chose to build the school at the lowest cost possible for a facility built to last.

Curtis Milner, the project’s principal architect, estimated it will be six to eight decades before the school needs considerable maintenance.

He explained how he designed the school with the nearby Heber Creeper train in mind.

A cubic clock will hang in the middle of the commons area resembles Central Station in Glasgow, Scotland, and exposed metal trusses that line the roof work with the spacious atmosphere imitate the character of a train station, he said.

The top of the doorway students will pass through walking to and from the bus is adorned with a sign that reads “Arrivals” and “Departures.”

“In the 1920s, the train stop in the Heber Valley was the highest capacity livestock station in the entire country,” Sweat said. “It goes back to the history of what eventually became the Heber Creeper and that’s what we remember in our lifetime as kids, and now it’s the Heber Valley Historic Railroad.”

Though the school’s auditorium currently is little more than an orchestra pit in the ground and classrooms walls only go waist high, it is taking shape and — according to Sweat — doing so without any major budgetary changes.

The post Wasatch builds a new high school as county student population is predicted to grow appeared first on Park Record.