While outgoing Park City School Board President Andrew Caplan plans for the current board to renew Superintendent Jill Gildea’s contract as soon as August, a petition drive urging that the next board handle this key task after the November election continues gathering signatures.
A new board with fresh eyes should make this decision, assert the organizers of the change.org petition, Josh Mann and Karl Persson. The next board will begin in January 2025.
Caplan and board Vice President Wendy Crossland have quit their races for reelection and will leave after this term. And incumbent board member Anne Peters, being challenged by Susan Goldberg, abandoned her race Tuesday.
Local pediatrician Eileen Gallagher will represent District 2, the seat currently held by Caplan. Danny Glasser, former CEO of the National Ability Center, is competing with the soon-to-retire Utah Director of Child Nutrition Programs Kathleen Britton to represent District 3.
Gildea’s current two-year contract, which was approved by the five-member board in June 2023, does not require the board to vote on renewal in 2024. It does state that she must be notified by Feb. 1, 2025, if the contract will not be renewed. Her current agreement ends on June 30, 2025.
“In the absence of a written nonrenewal, this agreement shall automatically renew at the end of its term, or when a successor is appointed,” the contract says.
“There’s no reason to pull this forward as Andrew Caplan is attempting to do,” Persson said. “We don’t believe that there needs to be a vote early for any reason.”
Mann, who ran unsuccessfully for the school board in 2022, said his interest comes as a community member and a parent with kids in the school.
“As a taxpayer, it’s where the majority of our money from property taxes go,” he said. “It’s always been something pretty important from my perspective.”
Caplan said June 20 during KPCW’s “Local News Hour” that the school board planned to renew Gildea’s and Business Administrator Randy Upton’s contracts well before the upcoming election.
“As a board, we think that Jill and Randy are both doing a great job, and fully intend on renewing their contracts, and hope that they stay as long as they’re willing to be stewards of education in this community,” he said on the show.
He described Gildea’s performance as “excellent” and said her high pay, the highest of any district superintendent in Utah, comes from her experience, her performance, and the high cost of living in Park City.
Gildea is also contractually guaranteed a home within Park City School District’s boundaries and a vehicle, which is not uncommon for school district superintendents in ski communities.
In their petition, Mann and Persson called into question whether Gildea has been “excellent.”
“We hold a different view of Dr. Gildea’s record, and respectfully request outgoing board members leave any potential contract renewal for the 2025 school board to decide. We believe it aligns with good governance for incoming board members to make a decision on Dr. Gildea,” the petition says. “We also believe PCSD will benefit from finding a new superintendent who places a higher priority on transparency, accountability and following laws.”
The petition also claims Gildea hasn’t had a single performance review since joining the district in 2018. Caplan said that’s incorrect, but her annual performance reviews are not publicly available.
Along with the district showing top academic scores, Gildea’s recent tenure has included revelations of illegally stored toxic dirt, a federal investigation showing 180 documented cases of student-to-student harassment the district didn’t sufficiently address to legal standards, and a state audit that showed the district hasn’t done enough for groups of students who qualify for federal assistance.
Mann said he disagreed that a board whose majority will change next year should decide on the longer-term future of the district’s top administrator, considering the recent controversies.
“To me, that just didn’t seem right. You’ve got two to three new board members that will be coming on,” Mann said. “I just tended to think that they had the right to pick the superintendent that they want to do business with.”
Persson filed two federal civil rights complaints last fall against the district over how it has handled bullying of his first-grade son. But he said this petition and the desire to ask board members not to hold a vote until next year does not just stem from any individual experiences.
“I think this is bigger than that,” he said. “I think it’s really about ensuring that there’s fiscal responsibility and transparency in these processes, which is truly why Josh and I started this petition. We want to ensure that it follows the democratic process and it’s very transparent.”
Caplan gave the petition little credence.
“If this board were to neglect our fiduciary responsibility to review and renew the superintendent’s contract because of comments from a ‘blogger,’ we would leave the newly elected board members in an impossible position,” he said. “They will be sworn in on the first meeting of the month and have around a week to assess the performance of the superintendent and business administrator and decide on their future.”
He also shared his dismay at Mann’s previous criticism of Gildea from the Park Rag website Mann runs and from the “Park City Follies” performances in which he contributed as a writer.
“Repeated personal attacks on (Gildea) by Josh Mann are not only inappropriate but borderline harassment,” Caplan said. “This has been a pattern of behavior since her arrival.”
Mann said he’s tried to focus on issues he sees as important to the community, and he added that he wasn’t behind the Follies’ jests at Gildea this year. Those were not a personal attack from him, but a wider representation “of how different people in the community are thinking of how our schools are operating,” he said. The Follies included many jokes about a perception of the school district superintendent’s invisibility at public gatherings.
Persson said Caplan’s comments contradict the reasons he gave for dropping out of the school board race, which were to allow for “new ideas and new enthusiasm.”
“Andrew Caplan suggesting that they’re going to move up votes doesn’t quite align with his previous statements,” Persson said. “We do feel that it really would follow really good governance to allow the new board to conduct this vote, and it aligns with what he said himself about allowing for new enthusiasm.”
Persson said he also thought Caplan publicly declaring what the board would do without the board having yet taken a vote is undemocratic given that not all members are guaranteed to be in agreement.
“I would highly encourage the community to reach out to their board representatives as well and make their voices heard regardless of what their positions and thoughts are,” he said. “I think that’s part of the democratic process as well.”
The Change.org petition, nearing 300 signers on Tuesday, includes an image listing board members’ emails: acaplan@pcschools.us for Caplan, wcrossland@pcschools.us for Crossland, apeters@pcschools.us for Peters, nhill@pcschools.us for Nicholas Hill and mreed@pcschools.us for Meredith Reed.