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Show Wed/Thurs/Fri, March 21-23, 2018 The Park Record A-11 Few challengers eye Park City seats Mixed reactions to funding compromise Only one race in Park City will be contested Question on Nov. ballot to address fuel tax for funds CAROLYN WEBBER The Park Record MMXV III Several seats on the Boards of Education throughout Summit County are open, but few people applied to challenge current members. In the Park City School District Board of Education, three seats will be on the ballot in November but only one is being contested. Anne Peters from District 1 and Erin Grady, who was recently appointed to fill the vacancy left by Julie Eihausen in District 5, are the only candidates who filed for their respective races. Vicky Fitlow and Kara Hendrickson filed for candidacy in District 4. They would replace outgoing J.J. Ehlers. The filing window to become a candidate closed last week. Fitlow, who moved to Park City in 2000, sent her three children to Soaring Wings Montessori School and Weilenmann School of Discovery. Her oldest daughter will attend Treasure Mountain Junior High next school year. She said that her children’s transition into the district is one of the reasons she is running, and she wants to represent her area’s constituents as the district decides its direction. The candidate elected to District 4 will join the Board in the wake of critical decisions in the coming months, such as the hiring of a new superintendent, an associate superintendent of teaching and learning and a principal of Park City High School. The school district is also expected to continue to grapple twith issues like realignment and cbuilding improvements. “It’s an exciting time for our district,” Fitlow said. “We have so much potential. I feel like we are on the cusp of the next chapter of Park City School District, and I want to be involved in that.” She said that she will bring experience to the Board, since she 2has served on the Weilenmann School’s Board of Directors for CAROLYN WEBBER The Park Record PHOTO BY JAMY BEECHER PHOTOGRAPHY (LEFT); COURTESY OF KARA HENDRICKSON Vicky Fitlow, left, and Kara Hendrickson are running for the open District 4 seat in the Park City Board of Education. They would be replacing J.J. Ehlers. COURTESY OF ERIN GRADY (LEFT); PHOTO BY DEREK ISRAELSEN Erin Grady, left, and Anne Peters are the only candidates for their respective seats on the Board. Grady joined the Board earlier this year after Julie Eihausen stepped down. Peters joined last year. a few years. She recently completed a year as the chair and will soon step down from the Board. While on Weilenmann’s Board, she said she learned to work in a group and ensure that the members were not overstepping boundaries. Proper board governance and oversight is one of the things Fitlow hopes to focus on if elected, along with fiscal responsibility. She also said that legal training has helped prepare her in process and procedures, which would benefit the Park City Board. Hendrickson brings a different set of skills. The recently retired school teacher taught for 30 years, and for the last 16 at Jeremy Ranch Elementary School. She plans to stress the importance of listening to the voice of teachers and students in her campaign. She said teachers often feel left out of the decision-making process in the district, and she wants to listen to them and help them understand why decisions are made. “They are the ones in the trenches working with the students and (the students) are our No. 1 goal,” she said. As the Board hires new leaders and further develops its strategic and master plans, Hendrickson said that she will bring a teacher’s perspective. She said that she will also bring an understanding of the schools, since her children attended the district’s schools from kindergarten through high school. Grady, the newest member of the Board, said that she always planned on running again when she was appointed last fall. She said that she, too, is excited to be involved in the changes that will be taking place in the district, such as master planning. Please see Few, A-12 Lack of funding in Utah public schools and equalization of money among districts has been an ongoing conversation in the state for several years. This year, Utah lawmakers voted to increase the amount of funding and divvy the money more equally for education statewide. Under pressure from a citizen initiative called Our Schools Now, the Utah State Legislature worked together with the group, which involved business leaders and representatives from the Utah Education Association, to write a compromise. Next school year, public education in Utah will receive an additional $292 million. An additional $845 per pupil could be distributed to schools by 2023, according to a press release from the Utah House of Representatives. “The power and momentum of the Our Schools Now initiative, with the thousands and thousands of signatures that were gathered, was very influential in this legislative session,” said Heidi Matthews, a former librarian at Treasure Mountain Junior High School and president of the Utah Education Association. In H.B. 293, the Legislature voted to freeze the state basic property tax rate for five years and establish a new weighted pupil unit value tax rate. The weighted pupil unit is the mechanism the state uses to fund public education. The Legislature also voted to create the Teacher and Student Success Account to be used to supplement school funding. School districts will have the power to determine how money is used. Matthews said that the ac- count is one of the things that excited her most about the compromise. She said that, although the account will grow to be about half of what the Our Schools Now initiative was asking for, the details of how the funds will be distributed align with the group’s goals. The compromise also included H.J.R. 20, which authorized a non-binding question on the November ballot to ask if voters want to increase the fuel tax by 10 cents per gallon. Such an increase would be expected to generate approximately $170 million in new revenue for the Transportation Fund. Thirty percent would go toward maintaining roads and the rest, 70 percent, would go toward education. Matthews said that, over the years, transportation has taken money from the general fund that would have been set aside for education. For that reason, a boost to the gas tax was proposed for the funding, rather than an increase to the income and sales taxes, which was the proposition made by Our Schools Now. Eighty percent of the education money from the gas tax increase would go toward the teacher and student success account for K-12 and 20 percent would be used for higher education, she said. Matthews said that now, those who were helping to gather signatures for the Our Schools Now initiative will change gears to educate voters about the gas tax. At the time of the session, Our Schools Now had gathered 150,000 signatures, more than the 113,000 it needed to be on this year’s ballot. Megan Luckan, who helped gather signatures in Park City, said the compromise is encouraging because it focuses on spreading funds throughout the state. She said that she quickly learned that there was a funding problem when she moved to Utah several years ago. She frequently heard of teachers Please see Decision, A-12 SKI 7 days on UTAH’S BEST MOUNTAINS FOR JUST $409. 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