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PARK CITY — Two Park City residents have started an online petition urging the Park City School District's board to leave the decision of renewing district Superintendent Jill Gildea's contract in the hands of the incoming school board.
The petition, launched by Josh Mann and Karl Persson, comes on the heels of Park City School Board President Andrew Caplan telling KPCW that the decision to renew Gildea's contract wouldn't be left to the new board.
"No, that's a decision made by this board and will happen this year," Caplan said.
Mann, Persson and 390 others who have signed the petition, think the decision is a mistake.
"The majority of the board is going to turn over," Mann, who ran for a seat on the Park City School District board in 2022, told KSL.com. "You then have the current school board president who says, 'Yeah, we're going to vote to renew a contract for a controversial superintendent before the next board is seated,' and that just doesn't seem right."
Indeed, Caplan and Vice President Wendy Crossland are not running for reelection. Current board member Anne Peters abandoned her reelection campaign, leaving Susan Goldberg as the uncontested candidate in District 1, meaning the board will include three new board members after the November election.
"Those people, I think, should be the people who are actually representing us and making the decision on whether or not they want to renew Dr. Gildea's contract," Mann, who is also a parent of a student in the district, said.
Mann and the petition's signees are not alone in this sentiment, as Nick Hill, a current board member, also thinks the decision should be "taken by the incoming board."
"I'm certain the incoming board will be smart, thoughtful and well-prepared for the nature of the role they are walking into. I think they will be quite capable of making a decision on the superintendent's contract if they feel they have enough information, or allowing it to roll over if they feel they don't," Hill told KSL.com. "Frankly, I think it's incumbent on us as remaining board members, together with district leadership, to ensure they have all the information they need to hit the ground running in January."
Tumultuous tenure
Mann emphasized that the petition isn't calling for Gildea's contract not to be renewed, instead asking to let the incoming board decide the matter.
Still, he doesn't think he and Persson would have gone as far as starting the petition "if the current superintendent had done an amazing job."
And it's far from a secret that Gildea's tenure with the district has been riddled with controversy. Since Gildea was brought on to lead the district in 2018, it has faced its fair share of challenges.
The first was the school board authorizing an $870,000 home purchase for Gildea by way of a 3-1 vote months after she was appointed as the superintendent.
Former board member Petra Butler, who resigned from the board in 2018, voted against the purchase, saying even though Gildea's contract requires the district to provide housing, purchasing the home was not a good move.
"We're taking almost $1 million out of our capital budget," Butler said during the September 2018 meeting. "That's a million dollars, almost, that we cannot spend to either fund building another school, buying property, whatever it might be. So that gives me another issue for pause."
Then, in March 2022, the district was charged with failing to report three cases of suspected child sex abuse to police. The problems didn't stop there, however.
A year later in March 2023, Season Cain — a mother of a student in the district — filed an Office for Civil Rights complaint, alleging that her daughter was experiencing antisemitic bullying at Ecker Middle School, with students saying they hate Jewish people or saying "KKK" in her daughter's face, over and over.
Cain said she tried working directly with school officials, to no avail, for four months before finally filing an Office for Civil Rights complaint in December 2022.
In the spring of 2023, the Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into seven harassment complaints filed against the Park City School District. But what the office found over the course of its investigation blew the initial scope of the complaints out of the water, finding over 180 reported incidents of student-to-student harassment from 2021 to 2023.
Hill said that he thought Caplan's comments that Gildea's contract renewal would be decided by the current board "were premature."
"Saying that before we discuss it was unfortunate in that we have a crisis of trust with many in the community — as the petition lays bare — and I don't think we can address it without a robust and transparent goal setting and evaluation process," Hill said.
Highest paid superintendent
Mann admitted he doesn't think the job of a district superintendent is an easy one, but said that he would expect better management from the highest paid superintendent in the state.
According to OpenPayrolls, Gildea's salary in 2022 was $406,642. That's higher than Alpine School District Superintendent Shane Farnsworth ($310,538) and former Granite School District Superintendent Rich Nye ($374,490), despite the Park City School District being significantly smaller than Alpine and Granite.
"The superintendent doesn't have the housing costs that the rest of us have ... to either find and rent or buy a house," Mann said. "That's covered. She has a house that's paid for."
He explained that he understands the district has to pay well to attract the best talent and to account for the fact that Park City is a resort town, but since the district provides a house and vehicle for Gildea, he believes the salary should be closer to "market rate" than "resort rate."
What's next
Hill said at this point, there has been no discussion among the board regarding Gildea's contract, though he expects it to be on the agenda for the board's August meeting.
"The argument for the current board making the decision would be that they are more intimately familiar with what's been happening in the district. In my opinion, that's not insurmountable and I don't agree that the incoming board can't have informed and valid opinions on how best to implement their vision for the district," Hill said.
"The benefit of the incoming board making that decision is that they will come in with their own vision for the district and the superintendent is the single most important aspect of implementing that vision."
