Changes in policy aimed at making the Park City School District’s flow of information to the public through the news media smoother would require that reporters work with a central communications team first.
The current policy leaves access up to individual schools’ administrators. The change appears to add a layer of bureaucracy between journalists and sources, though school officials say that’s not the case. The school board passed the change on a first reading this month and will finalize it at a later session.
District officials said the policy hasn’t been updated in a decade and changes in complexity at the school district necessitated taking another look.
News coverage in the wake of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights report in March appears to be a factor, as well. The report followed an investigation that found students in three of the district’s schools have faced 180 cases of targeted harassment, and that the school district failed to stop the cases from continuing even after it was made aware.
A communications leader at the district complaining that she felt comments from Superintendent Jill Gildea didn’t paint the district leader in a positive light told the reporter who wrote the story that the district intended to control the context of district coverage in the future.
Weeks later, the district’s communications policy came to the board.
If the board finalizes the revisions, journalists would need to first submit their requests for access for stories to the district’s Family and Community Engagement team rather than going directly to school principals or administrators.
FACE Director Eric Esquivel insisted the update is not meant to tie the hands of reporters looking to cover school affairs, and that this policy change would actually streamline the process for journalists to inform the public through stories at schools and from the classroom.
The vast majority of stories and photographs in at least local media outlets are about achievements, standout activities and students and employees recognized for awards. Recent stories coordinated through direct access to schools included a feature about an after-school club devoted to radio-controlled model cars, coverage of an earthquake simulation experiment and a discussion with a principal on his school’s coming expansions and the programs they will allow. If the policy amendments are passed, access to schools for those stories will need to be cleared with the FACE team as well as the teachers or principals involved.
Board of Education President Andrew Caplan said the policy change is meant to lighten the load on school principals. With the updates, however, the policy still says principals are the media contacts for their schools.
He grew impatient when asked how the updated policy would help principals better communicate with the public, lessen their workload, or how limiting inquiries to one point of contact would improve communication with the community.
“FACE is the point of contact for all media inquiries. That is their job description,” he said via email. “You can disagree with that role, but as the district works on improving communication with the community, we are trying to centralize the points of contact.”
Asked further questions, including about improving transparency as well as First Amendment concerns, he said the questions themselves were “a perfect example.”
“You have sent me five emails about non-education-related topics. I have spent 15 minutes out of my day responding to them,” he wrote. “Should our principals be doing the same thing? Constantly answering inane questions instead of educating our students?”
Soon after the interaction, FACE Director Eric Esquivel met with The Park Record.
He explained that he proposed the changes after district officials realized the policy hadn’t been updated in a decade.
“It’s really division of labor and span of control, what it boils down to,” Esquivel said. “We’ve had a bad habit, truthfully, in my opinion, of going straight to a teacher or going straight to a principal. And I see value in it, and we’re not going to stop that. … We’re not going to limit you. We’re going to help facilitate all that.”
Often, he said, there’s additional information that media representatives might miss if they go directly to a classroom or even a school administrator who may not know all the information or context, but others might. Members of the FACE team might know more and could better facilitate more complete coverage from the journalist’s point of view.
He said the change can also help principals by simplifying the media-coordination process for them, which in turn would save everyone time and effort.
“I want to assure you we’re not trying to block anybody or anything. We’re trying to enhance it,” he said.
He said the policy change would improve the district’s transparency with the community because if FACE team members declined to speak on a subject, that’s a definitive answer from an accountable district representative.
“We’re not going to block anything,” he said. “We’re not trying to hide anything.”
Public Information Officer Colton Elliot, a member of the FACE team, explained that the team itself is still in its first year, which has necessitated policy changes to integrate itself into the school district’s structure. The team’s largest focus this year has been on internal communications and ensuring that staff members learn about news and other developments first.
Esquivel suggested regular meetings with members of the press in an effort to continually improve the process guiding news media accessibility in coverage, even difficult coverage, with the aim of building trust between school district and the community at large.
“There’s a lot of room to grow,” Esquivel said. “I think if we can come at it from the perspective that we want to leave it better than we found it, I think we accomplished something and we can at least walk away saying I contributed.”