Back to school: An overview of the Grand County School District board meeting on August 16

The Grand County School District (GCSD) Board of Education held its first regular meeting of the 2023-2024 school year on August 16, as the school year officially kicked off on the same day. Superintendent Taryn Kay joined four members of the five-person board to discuss several topics. Board member­­­­­­­ DeeRay Wardle was absent.

Safety

The Superintendent’s Report focused on saf­­ety. Based on feedback from parents that it is a busy time of year, the school safety parent meetings will be held later—possibly in October, Kay said. 

Superintendent Kay, Grand County Sheriff Jamison Wiggins and Moab City Police Chief Jared Garcia recorded a radio broadcast on the local radio station KZMU on school safety. The three said there are regular meetings of representatives from the school district and public safety organizations to discuss strategies to prevent and prepare for emergencies of various kinds, from school violence to extreme weather.

“We take the safety of our students and staff very seriously— and we really do actively plan for any type of emergency,” Kay said in the radio broadcast. 

“We have a whole bunch of things in place, and it’s an important thing for us that we are super conscious of,” Kay told the Moab Sun News.

The resolution to approve City of Moab Police officers as School Resource Officers as an inter-local agreement was approved by the board by a 4-0 vote. The School Resource Officer is a five-year contract with The City of Moab and the GCSD to provide on-site safety at the schools. Both have “been working on this for a very long time,” Kay said; the district agreed to pay a third of the resource officer’s salary.

Staffing

Staffing at Helen M Knight is complete, and the Grand County Preschool is fully staffed, which has been a “very long time [coming],” Kay said. Student enrollment, as of August 15, was 736 students at HMK. 

However, 18 job openings are still in need of being filled. These positions include four teaching assistants, one site-based therapist, two teachers, three full-time and one part-time  custodians, and three bus drivers. Background checks are taking a while, Kay said, as many education employees are flooding the state network. The need for substitute teachers is also a hiring priority—by the end of the 2022-2023 school year, there were only five substitute teachers across the entire district. 

Policy updates

The board also discussed a number of policy updates including support for students who work, honors courses, home-centered school enrollment, school uniforms, and parent access to student library information. 

The biggest change was removing COVID language from school policy documents. The board wil post these policies for public comment on Google Documents.

The board discussed the team’s current goals, such as approving the all-digital student-parent handbooks, changing the bell schedule at the middle and high schools, and creating a new online hall pass system called “Smartpass” that can be tracked in real-time. This year will also mark a change from the trimester system to a quarter (semester) system. 

Student Body President update

Ali Jones, the student body president, spoke at the meeting about attending a three-day leadership conference at Utah Tech University over the summer. She and other student body member met with the founder and CEOs of Crumbl, the Logan, Utah-based cookie company, and “learned what it is like to run these companies and be in leadership positions,” Jones said. 

Jones said that the back-to-school assembly turned out well. It was “short and to the point.” It was an excellent opportunity for students to be introduced to teachers and provide updates for the year. It provided a fun time filled with music and allowed students to hang out with their friends. Jones said she “could tell kids wanted to be there.”

This year’s theme for the student body is “We are greater th­­­an me.”

“Our little community went through a lot last year. It was a hard year for most people but also a great year to come together and help families,” Jones said. “The focus this year is that, as a community, we are more significant than just one person; we can do so much more together, and as students, we have so much potential, willing to participate and help out. Focus on yourself first and then how you can help everyone else and come together.”

The next GCSD meeting will be held on September 20, starting at 5:15 p.m. Board Meetings are scheduled on the 3rd Wednesday of each month, are open to the public, and are available to watch electronically on Zoom.

For more information about GCSD, go to: https://www.grandschools.org/.