A rough year for the Park City School District got rockier with school board members who won’t be there next year saddling the district with an expensive contract renewal for a superintendent who may have outlasted her welcome.
I say “may have” because the issue here isn’t really Superintendent Jill Gildea, but the board. It’s been the board for a bit, I think, or more specifically a plainly temperamental president too often allowed his way. That’s not too personal, is it?
The three who rammed the renewal through all had abandoned their quests for reelection, whether growing weary of a hard job that comes with criticism in the best of times, reading the electorate that voted out the incumbents in the last school board race, or simply discovering better things to do with their time nearly all at once.
All of that is understandable. I’ve always thought the school board is the toughest public assignment, having observed plenty of these boards and administrations between upstate New York and the southern California coast, along with rich and poor communities in between.
You do get a sense for which school districts are functioning well and which are struggling. Covid and this still post-Covid era have tested especially the schools. I had the window seat on Truckee, Grass Valley/Nevada City, Aspen, now Park City. But I was most familiar before then with Eagle County, Colorado — the Vail Valley’s district — where my kids went and my wife worked.
A sign of the shoals came with the completely unsurprising discovery this week that Gildea has been job hunting. A network serving public charter schools in Colorado this week named her their only remaining candidate for CEO.
The wrinkle is that their board decided this nearly a week before the dramatic Park City School Board vote last week against the will of the board members and candidates who will be picking up the pieces next year.
A clause in her contract appears to stipulate that Gildea notify the board if she decides to look for a new job. The “board” didn’t know this. The full board also had no idea they would be voting to renew the contract this year instead of next when the school board president announced this in an interview with the thoroughly evil media.
A Caesar complex is a sign of a dysfunction, sure enough. Whatever grip Caplan has on the rest of the board, that’s not healthy. It’s a big part of why I suggested he leave now rather than at the end of the year. He may have been a terrific school board member in earlier times, and maybe through Covid, those most trying and scary days. He’s not a positive force now, however.
Or is this just the news media making it all up? KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher made him to declare the board would renew the contract with her wily ways. The lame ducks didn’t power through with a 3-2 majority against the will of just about everyone else involved. Construction has gone well. The soil isn’t really toxic. What bullies? All that state and federal stuff? Figments of the media imagination. The media has all the power, not a school board president. Everyone knows that.
Ironically, perhaps, Dr. Gildea’s biggest problem is Caplan himself. I’m sure this is not his intention, but he’s dragging her down. We’re confusing issues with him as hers as well.
Rough patches happen. Education and bureaucracies cannot be rinsed clean of humans, after all. Kids are marvelous and they are the worst sort of brats. They are kids. It takes parents, a village, a community, the school system to raise them responsibly. By and large, though, the district is helping produce quality adults. Let’s acknowledge that, along with their teachers, principals and support staff including administrators.
Superintendents guide the slow turns in the big ship, influencing the classroom but not in it. Academically, the district is doing pretty well. The extracurricular opportunities are pretty vast. The teachers are pretty good. That’s more the fingerprint of the superintendent than the board.
Circling wagons and playing cat and mouse with the “media” and therefore the larger community is more of a board issue, frankly. There’s a tone that needs to change. I believe this will improve dramatically with the new year.
The Park City Follies were on to something, I think, piling on the district superintendent if at times meanly, I agree, though with sins better laid on the board. The real problem has been a board majority that has gone much too much along with the president and his temper, an Achilles’ heel now.
Gildea deserves a chance to show what she can do with a different, more open, more friendly board that also listens better. If she leaves now, which is understandable, I’ll credit the hubris and the predictable reaction to a lame duck majority ramming through the renewal. That was wrong, simply put.
I’m looking forward to the district again getting it right. I’ve seen that many times, too — a new board following a terrible reign with relief and a lot of positive steps from there. Tying the hands of next year’s board with the renewal now is problematic, but leave open the thought it could prove providential in the end. How’s that for an interesting paradox?
Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at drogers@parkrecord.com or (970) 376-0745.