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Episode 82: Visiting Mathew Wheatley’s AP US Government Students

Sup with the Sup
Sup with the Sup
Episode 82: Visiting Mathew Wheatley's AP US Government Students
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Wendy Dau: Welcome everyone to the next episode of Provo City School District’s What’s Up with the Sup podcast. I am Superintendent Wendy Dau. This week, I had the opportunity to visit Matt Wheatley’s AP U.S. Government class at Timpview High School, where the students asked lots of really great questions about anything from the Tinker Case to all sorts of things about Department of Education, funding, how we prioritize money in the school district– it was a really great opportunity. So we’re going to tune in and you’re going to hear students ask questions and us have a conversation about all of those things. It was a great day to be in the classroom, but first, let me give you our updates.

  • There are 10 new policies or procedures available for review on our district website.
    • Go to provo.edu, click on Policies, Forms, and Documents, and you can click on Review Draft Policies here.
      • Policies to specifically pay attention to would be Policy 3500, which is about extracurricular activities and how parents can go through a complaint process if they have issues at their school.
      • One is 4210, which is about the term of instruction for school days and approval of district and school calendars. Those are probably the two that are the most important, and then for employees, we have postpartum and parental leave and a policy on the formation of parent and school support organizations.
  • The next school board meeting will be an all day board meeting on Friday, March 28th.
    • The meeting will take place at the Grandview Technology Center.
    • It begins at 8:30 A.M.
      • We will be discussing some of our results of our boundary and feasibility study.
      • We will also be discussing the costs of specific programs and what our financial priorities are.
      • We will be working with the association to identify priorities for our teachers and our employees.
        • As we know, our budget is limited, and we want to ensure that the priorities that we put in place reflect the priorities of the board, while also receiving employee input.
      • We will also be receiving a report on Dual Language Immersion.
      • We will also be having a report on gifted and talented, or our CAS program, will also be taking place that day.
  • And of course, many new policies will be discussed.
  • Continue watching for my weekly videocasts in your email. These videocasts provide one place for you to learn about important things happening across the district.

Wendy Dau: And now, let’s tune in to our AP Government class.

Wendy Dau: So, it’s a pleasure to be here. So, ask me your questions, tell me all the things.

Student 1: I want to question something– a trend I’ve noticed in the school system just overall, is that classes have overall have been getting easier, and grades have been pushed higher. And I’m wondering if there’s a correlation with that in college as college is increasingly being seen as a mandatory thing and thus pushing the grades higher to try and just appease not just parents but colleges to try and push more kids to go to those colleges but that in turn also creates a negative reflection where because grades are always pushed so high doesn’t always fully accurately reflect the student and what they know on the subject.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, agreed. I don’t know, do you, do you guys feel like classes have gotten easier over time? Do you feel, I think you guys are just pretty smart, so.

Student 1: Like I’ve talked to a couple of teachers about this, so like particularly Miss Van Orden who teaches English here. And she says that like grade inflation is kind of a big thing, kind of like with what Thomas was saying, you know, obviously everyone wants to go to college, so everyone wants a 4. 0.

Student 1: But also, you know, in the age of like Powerschool where you can check your grades constantly, you can all, like, grades have just kind of– everyone really wants an A, and so everyone’s kind of expecting that.

Wendy Dau: Oh, that’s a good point. I hadn’t thought about it like that. When it comes to, do I think things are getting easier, I think there is a lot more pressure to increase grades.

Wendy Dau: I think there’s a lot of pressure that come from parents. And like, you can check, and your parents can check your grades. Like, I was checking my son’s grades every single night, and get that assignment in, and it was, I was like, wow. But, that was not the case when I was in school, right? Because you just, it, you– miraculously, your report card was mailed to you and the grades were there. You had no idea what was going to show up on that report card. So it was amazing if you ended up with an A at that point. But I will say we actually push you to much higher requirements for a high school diploma than we used to.

Wendy Dau: So for example, when I was in high school, you only had to have two years of math and you only had to have through algebra one. So the algebra that you were taking in 7th and 8th grade, which is your 7th and 8th grade math, and in some cases many of you are doing that level of math in 5th and 6th grade, that was the requirement for a high school diploma.

Wendy Dau: So when I took AP Calculus, that was not only weird because I was one of the only girls in the class, because girls don’t do math, that’s kind of the thing, and so one of the only girls in the class, but also it was very odd that somebody would go that far in math. Like, why are you doing that? Like you don’t have to do that kind of thing.

Wendy Dau: The only courses where we had to take every single year was English, but you only had to have two years of math. You only had to have two years of science. So just the overall rigor and the requirements that were in place were much lower, you guys have to perform at a much higher level than what students did when I was in school.

Wendy Dau: So I don’t know that it’s gotten easier. I actually think we’re pushing you at a much higher level. When you think about what they do in kindergarten now, what our kindergarten classes do versus when I was in kindergarten, it was like structured play. And you like learned how to count to ten. And now parents are freaking out that their children can’t read chapter books when they’re leaving kindergarten.

Wendy Dau: Then they’re not brilliant, right? It’s a very different mentality that exists now. So I actually think the expectations have just gotten higher. I do think there is much more pressure to get a good grade and that the grade often reflects completion and behavior more than it does mastery of content. If that makes sense.

Wendy Dau: Your mastery, that’s why I love AP exams, right? Cause that demonstrates if you know the stuff. And when I was an AP teacher, the way that I worked it is If you got a 4 or 5 on the AP test, no matter what your grades were, first, second, third, fourth quarter, I just went back and changed it to an A because you had mastered the material.

Wendy Dau: If you’re getting a 4 or 5 on the AP U. S. History test, considering the national exam average was below 60 percent for passing, I was just like, that demonstrates you’ve mastered all of the materials. So your grade should reflect that. But that was just a philosophy that I had in that respect. So other questions.

Wendy Dau: Yes, go ahead.

Student 2: This is just kind of going off the previous question, but I feel like last year, at least the APUSH test was way easier than like any of the practice tests we took and like the, I know the national average went up a bunch and it’s just, feels weird to have this really difficult class and then the AP test is made easier. What are your thoughts on that?

Wendy Dau: Maybe you’re just really brilliant.

Student 2: I know it’s not just me though.

Wendy Dau: You gotta say it’s not just me. Yeah, I am– that’s what happened there!

Wendy Dau: I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s been over 13 years since I’ve been in the classroom now, so I think that would be an interesting conversation for, like, Cami White to ask her about what she’s noticed in terms of those trends.

Wendy Dau: I will say, I felt like over the years when I taught AP, I felt like that was the case. If my students could pass prior year’s exam from 10 years ago, they were going to definitely do quite well on the exam that they were given. And I don’t know if that’s just, see, I always wanted to think it was because I was just becoming a more brilliant teacher in that process.

Wendy Dau: And I was figuring out how to help the students better, but you might be right. It might be that it’s like, maybe we’re demanding too much or I don’t know. That’s a really interesting question. I don’t know. Please.

Student 3: So just to add to that last year, the AP U. S. history and the AP U. S. government tests went from being some of the very hardest– they bumped the pass percentage up about 20 percent. How do you balance– this is tough for a teacher and– and at the district level, I’m sure it’s very difficult –how do you balance creating rigor for the top students, while also like helping the bottom students to pass? And just we want to have rigor, but also we want to have–

Wendy Dau: We don’t want to discourage everybody from being, like, trying hard things.

Student 3: How do you balance that?

Wendy Dau: That’s a great question. Maybe by the time I’m done being a superintendent, I will have figured all of that out. I think one of the pieces that we need to recognize is that we don’t want to assume that only certain kids can handle a certain level of rigor, right? I think one of the things that makes a really successful academic program at a school, whatever it is, whether it’s an AP class or just your traditional route of, of classes, is you do have to have those really high expectations, but we need to figure out how are you providing the supports for students in that process.

Wendy Dau: So, I’ll give you an example. When I first started teaching AP European History, most little sophomores that were coming in had no idea how to write an essay or analyze documents or do any of those kinds of things. So you were really teaching them from scratch. Like, you had to break it down into those component pieces.

Wendy Dau: What we would do is, obviously kids that were high performing from the middle school would come in and they would be able to do that. But for kids that were kind of on that border, then we added what was called a writing lab for them. And so we added a support class in there where I explicitly went through and taught them how to read documents and how to analyze and what that would look like and how do you actually go through and write something on the fly. Because it isn’t just about, can I write it when I have two weeks to write it, it’s about– can I write it in, you know, 30 minutes or 45 minutes or 60 minutes, this timed type of situation.

Wendy Dau: And I do think there is tremendous pressure nationwide for graduation rates to be high, right? So that, that is how school districts get evaluated is by the graduation rate, and one parent mentioned to me, and I thought this was very profound, that the graduation rate should be matching the proficiency rates on your end of level tests, and when they’re not, then it suggests that we’re awarding diplomas for students who haven’t obtained that proficiency level.

Wendy Dau: And so a diploma becomes a little bit more like a completion type of situation rather than a I have actually demonstrated these competencies, right? That’s why then a GPA becomes so important. That’s why an ACT score becomes so important, because each of those data points, then, is what a university is using to start to project. A high school diploma becomes the base level of everything.

Wendy Dau: It’s going to make a difference in your overall earnings to have a high school diploma. But for most of you, that’s not going to get you the standard of living that you want, right? And so you’re gonna have to go above and beyond to do that. But that is if we make school more rigorous, we have to recognize that that graduation rate will fall as a result of that, unless we’re willing to put in a ton of resources.

Wendy Dau: So now they’re gonna, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but when students graduate, when students choose not to finish high school, they can take what is called the GED. You may have heard people who do that, right? So they can take the GED and they pass a math portion, a language arts portion and a social studies portion.

Wendy Dau: The state has now come in and said, any student who passes the GED, before they graduate from high school, they will now be awarded 13 credits towards a high school diploma. Because it demonstrates competency, it demonstrates that they have mastered these particular skills. I have mixed feelings about that because yes, there is a competency that’s tied to it, but it bothers me if a student is getting four years of English credit for that competency, because that test is not specifically aligning with all of the standards that we’re requiring you to go through. And so I have angst a little bit about that. Like, I’m not sure where I land on that. Like, I want kids to get high school diplomas. I get that. But what’s gonna start to be the motivation for you guys to all stay in school and, like, all of you could have passed the GED when you were probably in sixth grade. All right, high school diploma. Let’s go!

Wendy Dau: You could graduate by the time you’re in eighth grade. I mean, I don’t know like I don’t know that that’s beneficial, right? So I haven’t quite mapped that out in my head. I don’t know where that sits with me yet. Other questions.

Student 4: I have two questions. The first one is tied to what we were talking about before, and it’s just wondering what do you think is more important, the experience and skills you learn by going to school, or the knowledge you obtain from school? And then the second question is also, how do you determine the start and end times of the school?

Wendy Dau: That’s totally just random. So, anyway, I’ll get to that question in just a minute. Hey, yeah, it’s just like who do I not like today? It looks like high school students. You’re coming at 7:30. No. That would be a lot funnier if it were but I I’m gonna give you a cop out answer on that which you could probably predict.

Wendy Dau: It’s– I will actually say that the skills that you get from high school are gonna be much more valuable to you than much of the knowledge that you get. It’s going to be much more important that you know how to get information, use information, analyze information, evaluate that information than it actually is going to be.

Wendy Dau: Do I remember when the Magna Carta was signed? And the only reason I know when the Magna Carta was signed was because it might be a passcode on my garage door. I don’t know, because I always link everything to historical dates. That is how everything is linked in my house, but I think that that’s, what’s going to separate, there’s so many things that can keep all of this information and knowledge that are going to surpass us in terms. Like AI and robots and all of the things. The thing that’s going to make you unique is how can I evaluate that– what chat GPT just gave me.

Wendy Dau: By the way, it gives you wrong information frequently, because it responds to people putting in wrong information. Like it gave me a completely wrong address for something, and it’s like, it’s because somebody said, was this information helpful, and they did a thumbs up, and it was completely wrong, but if I had followed that, I would have been in trouble. But because I have really good critical thinking skills, I could say, there is no way it’s going to take me 26 hours to drive to Centerville, because it is very confused about where that is, right now.

Wendy Dau: And so it’s going to be that experience. I loved high school as a high school student. I loved being a high school principal. I love the vibe of a high school. I love the buzz of a high school for some kids. It is just like they want to crawl out of their skin, right? This is not their space, but the ability to collaborate, talk to people, to go talk to a teacher and say, Hey, I don’t understand this. Or I need to talk to you about my grade. I need to come in before school and fix this or whatever that might be. Those are skills that are going to separate you from all of this artificial intelligence that, that is coming out.

Wendy Dau: So in my mind, it’s that critical thinking, that ability to collaborate, the ability to communicate effectively. And communication is becoming easier because of AI, right? So stuff can help us with that. But at the same time, we still have to be able to sort through that and say, is that really what I’m trying to say here?

Wendy Dau: Does this really have the right tone? Does it include all of the information? And is it accurate? I mean, that, right now, we’re living in a world of just inaccuracy, left and right. And you have to be able to sift through so many pieces of information to actually get at some sort of kind of vestige of the truth.

Wendy Dau: People think that information is widely available and it’s not. You have to sift through it and think about it and be like, that doesn’t sound right– what I just read, I don’t care, that sounds kind of wrong. So I need to go check this with two or three other places and start to piece this together. So that takes a lot of skill to be able to do that.

Wendy Dau: In terms of school start times, school starts at 7:30 here, yes? Oh, that’s early. I’m like, we know that research tells us that high school students need more sleep, right? And that really, you’re all like, huh. Yep, I really couldn’t use sleeping in until 9:00. Like yesterday when you started school at 9:30, that was way better. Thank you.

Wendy Dau: Why– why don’t we? So here would be the logistics of that. So, one is, I could do that and start everybody later if I had enough buses for everybody, and a bus costs about $150,000. So every time I buy a bus, I have to choose whether I want to hire one and a half teachers.

Wendy Dau: I’m not quite sure how you hire a half a teacher, but okay. One and a half teachers, or I’m going to buy a bus. So in order to buy enough buses to cover our elementary, middle, and high schools, I would probably have to add probably two million dollars to buy all of those buses so I could send all of you to school at the same time.

Wendy Dau: So right now you’re on a rotation, right? So they start with the high school, then they go to the middle school and then they go to the elementary school. So I can use the same bus at every level. So it’s much more efficient, right? If I wanted to make it so that everybody could go to school at the same time, that’s how much it would cost.

Wendy Dau: So then the next question becomes, well, why don’t you just flip the elementary? with a high school right? Some of our elementary schools aren’t showing up until 8:45 or 8:50. And you’re thinking that sounds dreamy, that would be amazing, right? So then if you’re picking up the bus at say 6:50 that means my little kindergartner is outside waiting for the bus at 6:50 in the morning.

Wendy Dau: So do I want a five year old or a six year old– you know, a lot of parents walk their kids to the bus stop and they help them get on. But if you’re like me where my mom worked, my mom dad both worked, I got myself to school. So there was nobody to walk you to the bus stop. That wasn’t happening. You had to do that on your own.

Wendy Dau: So do you want a six year old standing out on the bus when it’s dark at 6:50 in the morning? That’s the choice. And so the choice that we’ve made as a school board and superintendent is I don’t love that. Does that make sense? The other piece of it is, do you want school to end at 4:00? Oh, some of you are like, actually, I start waking up around one o’clock.

Wendy Dau: That would be dreamy. See, that’s when I get tired, is it’s like, I gotta start doing my email at one o’clock, because that’s brainless, and so then that is helpful, right? But, so, when we do that, and school then goes till four, then that means one of two things. So, think about all of the extracurricular things that many of you or your friends are involved with.

Wendy Dau: So, if I’m involved with that, then we either have to start those later. So that’s going to push you now to not coming home until even later than you are right now. For some of you that are involved in those extracurricular activities, are you really actually going to get more sleep as a result of that?

Wendy Dau: It depends. You might, or you might not. Cause just teenagers in general don’t get enough sleep. That’s what happens. So I think what happens then is, too, then we have to make decisions.

Wendy Dau: So think about baseball. If your baseball field is not a lit field– doesn’t have lights like football. You have to start those games by 3:30 because– same thing with softball, right?

Wendy Dau: Because if those are not lit fields, then you can’t get your JV games in and you can’t get anything in before it gets dark. Sometimes if a varsity game goes later than the JV doesn’t play because it gets dark and it’s kind of dangerous to be having bats and balls when it’s dark. That’s not good.

Wendy Dau: And because those sports are in the spring. That’s when that happens. So now I think about when a kid gets checked out of school for a baseball game. So it’s a home baseball game. I don’t have to get checked out of school early because school ends 2:20? 2:15 oh, excellent. Okay, 2:15. School ends. I can get out to the field.

Wendy Dau: Baseball, great. That game will end probably 5:00, 5:30, right? If school now is ending at 4:00 and I want to start that game at 4:30, I’m going to start running into some problems with being able to fit in all of the games, right? Or, I’m going to have to now check kids out of school to go to a home game. And what happens when you’re checking out of school?

Wendy Dau: You’re missing class, right? And think about it. Baseball and softball are always like Tuesday, Thursday. So now I’m missing two B Day classes. I’m going to start missing an hour and a half of instruction. total over the course of that week. Now for you guys, that’s easy peasy. You know how to make up your work.

Wendy Dau: You probably have already turned in assignments that are due like three weeks from now. I don’t know. No, you’re like, no. Usually five minutes before. Procrastination is the key to success. I am gonna tell you that. But, so when you start looking at all of those logistics, That’s when we start looking at, is this even doable?

Wendy Dau: And then you add a component into that when you’re dealing with really at risk populations where kids have to work. Then kids that are working, they can’t start their jobs until later, and so they can’t get as many hours. And some of those kids incomes, their parents rely on that income for survival. And so now I’ve made it that I’m cutting a couple hours of work off of, that affects a family’s ability, sometimes, to survive. And we have people like that in Provo.

Wendy Dau: We may not realize that, but that exists everywhere in Utah, in every single community that is, that is something we face. So these are all the things that every time somebody brings up, can we just please let the high school kids sleep in? And I’m like, yes, that would be super awesome.

Wendy Dau: But are you really understanding all of these logistics that go in with it? So right now school starts at 7:30 and I’m sorry, you drew the short straw. You have to come early. So it sucks. Please over here.

Student 5: Everything that you said, just– it makes sense. But also, it’s like, talked in a way like, where– I think our school right now is like a little short of seven hours, maybe? The number of like minutes in a classroom is, like, a certain amount of minutes and then we have a certain amount of days.

Student 5: But what creates that standard? Because everything that you said can be solved if the school day itself is shorter, or like, if we have shorter days. And there’s a lot of different countries that do it differently. So like, under what reasons do you guys set the standard that you have now to hit this number?

Wendy Dau: Also a made up number. You’re welcome. Lots of thought went into it. It’s made up. I’m sure there’s some research behind it. I couldn’t, I couldn’t cite it specifically. So the only regulation that we have in terms of the state, in terms of time, is they say you have to have 180 school days. You can take a chunk of those away for things like Parent Teacher Conferences, for professional development.

Wendy Dau: So what ends up happening is you actually go to school physically 175 days, and if we’re really, truly honest, most of you don’t go to school the last week of school, and so you probably are only going to school about 170 days, but don’t tell anybody I said that. So that’s set in state law. I don’t know how typical that is.

Wendy Dau: It seems like that’s pretty typical across the country. I don’t know where that 180 days came from. My guess is it’s usually that’s what you can get from Labor Day to Memorial Day. Is you can get that many school days. Now we have added a whole bunch of breaks during the school year. So Christmas break is longer, and we have a fall break, and we have a spring break.

Wendy Dau: Those things didn’t exist when I was in school. You got like a day for like spring break. It was like happy Easter. And now it’s much more a part of our culture to have those breaks put in place. So, so I think that’s pretty typical across the country. We used to have a 990 hour requirement and that’s where that seven hour school day came in. That’s gone. We actually could reduce the time of the school day and we would still be in compliance because the only requirement is for it to count as a school day. You have to do two things: you have to have four hours of instruction and you have to serve lunch.

Wendy Dau: So those two things, then you can count it. So yes, can we reduce that time? Now I’m going to tell you that anytime you start talking about instructional time, And you tell teachers you’re going to reduce the amount of time that they have with you, they’re going to freak out.

Wendy Dau: Because they already don’t feel like they have enough time to teach you all of the things that they want to teach you. There are probably classes that you sit through that you’re like, we could significantly reduce the amount of time in this class and it would be just fine. You know, I’m right. Okay. And so when you look at that, that is something that we could look at.

Wendy Dau: I mean, other countries do that their school day, or they have, I went to a school in New Zealand. And they have an hour for lunch and they have two half-hour tea breaks. Because they literally roll out carts and there’s like tea and scones and I’m like, this is amazing. Like many of the kids don’t like wearing shoes and so they didn’t have to wear shoes.

Wendy Dau: It’s a very nice school, but it was just like, no, bare feet is totally fine. And I’m like, wow, there’s so many different things here. So it is kind of made up to be quite honest. So could we re-examine that and just say maybe a high school day needs to be shorter? Yes, I just want you to know that there will be many angry teachers that will hurt me.

Wendy Dau: And so they might scare me more than you, but it is a conversation to have, right? Like what is happening there?

Student 6: Like obviously teachers might be mad because they feel like they’re missing out on instruction time, but how much of that do you think is teachers feeling like they need more instruction time because students aren’t paying attention? And do you think maybe that could be aided by shortening school days, like allowing students to focus more, giving them more breaks? Because I feel like, I don’t know, I don’t know enough about the data, but I feel like there’s a possibility that giving students more time at lunch or passing periods in a shortened school day might actually increase like retention and increase attention during like the school day.

Wendy Dau: I think that’s an excellent point. I think we have gotten caught up in this instructional time argument, right? Okay. And my argument has always been, if you have an effective teacher, that teacher’s going to be effective whether they have you for 25 minutes, 45 minutes, 90 minutes, they’re going to make that class seem like a breeze, right?

Wendy Dau: That’s what’s going to happen when they’re effective. The teachers that really struggle with that, it’s going to be like– that’s just hard, right? If you have not listened to this podcast, you should totally start listening to this podcast, because it’s very nerdy. It’s called The Hidden Brain, and it’s all about, like, psychology, and, and what’s happening with your brain, and they talk about, you need a break every 50 minutes, and you actually have to change the physical environment in order to be, like, to come back and be able to be creative back in your thought again, right?

Wendy Dau: Which is why 90 minute classes are terrible, unless you’re a teacher. Allows you at 50 minutes to stand up and maybe walk around and come back. Like, sometimes teachers will do that. Even say that, like, like part of leaving a place and then coming back to it creates a synergy that stirs those creative thoughts.

Wendy Dau: So yes. I think a piece of this is, what is our instruction actually looking like? Are we being really effective with the time that we have? Are we putting a lot of other pressures on teachers, which I think we do– we put an inordinate amount of pressure on them and on you as students. And are there ways to problem solve that so we could have more effective time?

Wendy Dau: It’s not about the length of time, it’s about how effective the time is, right? So, please.

Student 7: I have a couple questions. So the first one is, to you, what qualifies something as a P. E. credit? I just, the second part is–

Wendy Dau: I feel like this is a trick question.

Student 7: Do you want the second part now?

Wendy Dau: Yeah, yeah, yeah, do the second part now.

Student 7: So then, follow up. This year, Marching Band is no longer a P.E. credit, and I’m a little bit confused because in the Marching Band season, we go from about March until November, which makes up most of the year, and we spend more than 400 hours working on Marching Band music and being physical, and so I’m just wondering how come, and it used to only be 25 credits, it wasn’t even a full 5 credits, and so I’m wondering how come it’s no longer qualified to be a P. E. credit.

Wendy Dau: That’s a great question. I just want to qualify this by saying there are many things in many parts of your life that are going to be, if I can quote Hamlet, like there’s no method in the madness. Okay. The way that the state has high school credits set up is you have to have a teacher that has a highly qualified endorsement to be able to award the student the credit.

Wendy Dau: So your marching band teacher has a performing arts or has a music endorsement. They do not have a P.E. Endorsement, and therefore cannot award you that particular credit as a result. Now that can fall into other categories. So, sometimes like with Cheer, you could get like P.E. Credit, for example. I will just say as a high school principal, I got a little creative sometimes.

Wendy Dau: So it sounds like I need to do a little– but I’m going to follow up– and I’m going to find out why that happened. Because it feels like we need to fix something. Okay, please, you’re–

Student 8: Oh, you kind of answered it already, but I was just going to I’m on Dance Company, and our classes do count as P.E. Credit, and our teacher just has a BFA, so–

Wendy Dau: I’ll have to find that out. She might have an additional endorsement that she’s added at some I think she does. I can go look it up. Okay. What’s her name?

Student 8: Tara Taylor.

Wendy Dau: Tara Taylor, I knew that. I’ll find out.

Student 8: My question was more like, why like, don’t we do, like, more career centered, like, pathway learning in high school? Because I feel like people obviously go into many different careers, and obviously you need different skills for them.

Student 8: And so, like, how come we don’t try to, like, more focus kids who, like, know what they want to do on their careers, so they can get, like, started sooner, and, like things can just get rolling quicker.

Wendy Dau: It’s a fantastic question. I think we’re at a kind of at a critical juncture in Provo. Like I think traditionally Provo, and I’m speaking having only been the superintendent of the school district for 18 months.

Wendy Dau: So I think traditionally there has been a belief that kids are going to go to college. That that’s always been kind of the push in that direction, right? I think we’re starting to figure out that there are a ton of career and technical opportunities and kids right now have to go to MTECH to do a lot of that.

Wendy Dau: But the way that the MTECH schedule is set up, it eats up a ton of classes for students. And so they don’t always want to give up all of those classes. The other piece of that too, is if I don’t have all of my required credits in place, it can actually put me in jeopardy of not graduating. Which seems completely counterintuitive why we would do that, right?

Wendy Dau: So, one of the things that we’ve been talking about with the school board is to look at where Dixon Middle School used to be– do we want to create a Career and Technical Education site for our high school students where we would start creating more of those pathways and start that process.

Wendy Dau: So it does need to happen. We don’t have all of those options available and we’re relying on a lot of these outside entities to provide that. We need to identify the ones that are most high needs and bring them in here. And we also just need to make your everyday education a little more relevant. How many of you feel like you’ve been through a class and you’re like, I have no idea, and it’s okay, your teacher’s not looking right now– I have no idea why I’m in this class or when I’m ever going to use this ever again. You’ve all probably sat in one or two classes like that. Not this class, because this is government and this is the most important class you’re ever going to take. Because it’s going to– it changes your life forever to understand these things.

Wendy Dau: But– but that’s a piece. So the state legislature actually just passed a bill called a Catalyst Center Bill. Where they’re appropriating some block grants of, I think it’s 65 million or 75, what was it? 65 million? 60 million, so that school districts can start investing in Career and Technical Education Centers and expand those opportunities for kids.

Wendy Dau: So we are getting there, we’re just a little bit behind, but. By the time you graduate, it’ll be great. We’ll have it all figured out. So you’re welcome. I’m super helpful here. So please right here.

Student 9: How do you guys decide funding for sports?

Wendy Dau: Oh. Oh! That got uncomfortable. I heard a sigh. Wow. So. We get no money from the state for sports.

Wendy Dau: So everything that’s generated in terms of money comes out of a regular operating budget. So what happens is, you have to pay a participation fee to participate in sports. That pay, that helps your school pay for the refs. For– that’s usually what it is. Like when I think about how many refs you have to have for a basketball game over a basketball season, for example, almost all of my participation fees for basketball as a high school principal would go to pay for refs.

Wendy Dau: We as a district put aside– we meet with high school principals– and we put aside money for coaches to pay them their salaries, and every high school gets the same number of coaches and the same apportionment based on what sports they have.

Wendy Dau: And then the amount of money that comes in for sports, so a principal has what’s called a discretionary budget and they can use that for anything from to pay a DJ for a dance to pizza party for you because they love you to– they can use it for a lot. They could hire another teacher out of that money if they wanted to if they felt like they needed an additional teacher. They have some discretionary funding in that. So, for example, as a high school principal, I would sit down with my coaches at the beginning of every season and we would look at what their costs are.

Wendy Dau: So like, a very expensive sport is football. The reconditioning of helmets is really expensive, and every year they have to be reconditioned. And then if you’re replacing a uniform, or any kind of safety equipment that’s tied to that, that gets really expensive. So I would list out, like, this is approximately what our replacement cycle is on all of that equipment.

Wendy Dau: So, This is what football is going to get, right? Cross country, not a super expensive sport, right? And so their budget is going to be smaller as a result of that. But that’s something I just sat down with coaches, but that’s all coming out of that discretionary funding. So it comes from the state in the form of operations.

Wendy Dau: It comes in the form of for every single one of you that sits in here, we get almost 5, 000 for you, but most of that is going to pay for teachers. So everything else that comes in comes out of operation expenses and other pieces of that pie. So It does feel like, forever and ever, that there are certain sports that are favored over other sports.

Wendy Dau: You’re all like, yes. And sometimes that happens because those particular athletic groups will have what are called boosters. And so parent organizations will come in and they’ll raise significant money for that, and that has to go through a specific process. That we can’t truly shut down in that way.

Wendy Dau: Like, one of the things I would look at as a high school principal, for example, is, if somebody’s coming in and helping my baseball team with something, then I gotta make sure softball’s gonna have an equivalent amount going in. Cause you cannot– I could not allow those disparities to exist. And in addition to that, federal law doesn’t allow those disparities to exist when we’re talking about gender.

Wendy Dau: That doesn’t apply when we’re talking about football versus basketball versus baseball. We don’t have the, you know, Title IX for making sure that everybody loves baseball as much as football. That unfortunately doesn’t happen. So– so part of that is trying to sit down and figure out what’s fair based on what is needed and what that looks like.

Wendy Dau: So. I don’t know if I answered your question, but okay over here. This is like, you know, it’s like the best day of my life. This is amazing, and you guys are all like, she just stopped.

Student 10: Okay, so this is more just like a personal question about you, I guess, but also, it’s related. So we were talking about, like, kind of MTECH earlier, and I was just wondering, like, what do you think the value is in getting a college degree?

Student 10: And do you think everyone should go to college? Or do you think that some people should just like get a certificate?

Wendy Dau: No, I don’t think everybody should go to college. I’m gonna be really honest. I have three kids that all have very different educational backgrounds. And they all have very different skill sets, and of course, they’re my kids, so I love them, even though one of them’s really annoying, but it’s okay.

Wendy Dau: I’m just kidding! I’m seeing if you’re paying attention, but sometimes she is, it’s just because she’s sassy, like I am. My oldest son, to Utah State, and has a college degree, his wife has a college degree, and they make an obscene amount of money. They make more than I do, and they’re not nearly as smart as I am, and so it’s really irritating.

Wendy Dau: I’m just kidding. They’re way smarter than I am. Oh my gosh. My daughter in law is a food scientist, so she does quality control for all sorts of food companies and like, she can make yogurt out of, I think, like, powder or something. It’s pretty incredible. She just knows how to do amazing things. So, they live a very traditional life.

Wendy Dau: Like, they have a nice house. Their kids are in really expensive daycare. They have, it’s awesome for them. Great. I feel like they’re really stressed out a lot. Like, I don’t know. Their jobs are really intense and those pieces.

Wendy Dau: My other son went to college, dropped out, and that’s just not his game. He’s on the spectrum.

Wendy Dau: Struggles quite a bit with just… kind of I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s just some some sort of executive functioning like planning ahead and being able to do those particular things. I blame myself for most of that because I think I just didn’t teach him really well. But he’s a he’s a head custodian at a special needs school that services kids from K through age 22, and he helps with everything.

Wendy Dau: He can fix anything. He can put anything together. You need Ikea furniture put together, he’s your guy. And he is very, very happy. He loves video games. He loves, and he is the kindest human being you will ever meet in your entire life. Like he would, anyway, he just has a different skill set.

Wendy Dau: My third daughter has a tech degree. So like a two year degree. She’s an occupational therapist technician. So you can go to college and become an occupational therapist. She’s just a technician. She doesn’t want to do the whole college thing. Loves her job, loves the OTs that she works for, and that has worked really great for her. So, all of them are in different, are in different spaces.

Wendy Dau: I really believe that, that it just depends on– like for me, my job is my identity. For some people, that’s not going to be the case. Your job is going to be something you go to, you want to leave it there, and your identity is going to be your family, or it’s going to be a hobby, you’re going to be a skier, or, I don’t know, you’re going to crochet things, or some, I don’t know what it’s going to be.

Wendy Dau: You’re going to have an identity through something else. But my identity is through my job. A lot of people who, I, I think, end up in that really career-driven mindset, their identity kind of gets drawn into their job. It’s just about figuring out what works for you. If you want more free time, like don’t be a superintendent.

Wendy Dau: Like that is a terrible idea. But if you value that and you don’t value making as much money, then you just have to go through that and figure out what it is that, what it is that you value. What I will say, a college degree provided for me. In terms of just beyond being able to get a degree and showing perseverance and going through all of that, is it taught me to look at things from various perspectives that were very different from my own.

Wendy Dau: Because I would sit in a class, and it could be like a government class or an economics class or, or a physical science class, whatever it was. And you would just hear perspectives that were so different, because you’re dealing with people that are coming from all across the country, from different countries.

Wendy Dau: And sometimes, when you get into a field and you focus really narrowly, really fast, you know, just surround yourself with a lot of people who think exactly the same way you do. And I think that’s what broadened– I’m like, not everybody has the same lived experience that I do. So that’s why they’re coming at things differently, and it’s okay.

Wendy Dau: Like, I can disagree with them and still like them. And so, I would argue that, that that can be a huge, a huge benefit. You have to be pretty solid though, like some professors are really obnoxious. And they feel like, Their classrooms can be a place where they can pontificate and tell you about their worldview, but challenge them.

Wendy Dau: Like, just be obnoxious about it. Research it on your own, and that’s where you start to get your own sense of what do I believe in? This person isn’t going to tell me what I believe in. I’m going to get their perspective, but I also have these lived experiences that are just as valuable and I’m also learning all of these different things.

Wendy Dau: You’re going to put that together and, and become an incredible human being. And you’re going to do that even if you’re, even if you’re going to, even if you go straight into a career, depending on what you choose, you’re going to be exposed to a lot of different things. So just keeping an open mind becomes really important, I think.

Matt Wheatley: So we’ve got several questions asked about the Department of Education and the Trump administration– the attempt to essentially dismantle it, and so what might that look like? What are your thoughts on that could change in education for students? And then another one along the same vein of the Trump administration

Matt Wheatley: and ICE entering schools. So a couple of questions from students.

Wendy Dau: Would love to, okay. So let’s talk about the dismantling of the Department of Education. So one of the things that you need to recognize, and I think this is where so many people’s frustration comes from is that whenever you have government departments or government bureaucracies, you have waste.

Wendy Dau: The reason private businesses get so frustrated with government is because in private businesses, you have to report to stockholders. Right? And if you’re not making a profit, then they boot you out, and the company isn’t going to thrive, right? There isn’t quite that level of accountability with government, and that’s what drives people crazy.

Wendy Dau: So when we’re talking about dismantling the Department of Education, it’s coming from that mindset of we feel like there might be some waste that is happening in government. And in the Constitution there is nothing that says that the federal government controls education. It’s a state issue. So this is something that was created in 1979, I believe was the year when the Department of Ed. was created.

Wendy Dau: And it was created kind of in response because of the Cold War, because Russia was beating us at– their students were smarter. And so we were like, we’ve got to make sure that our kids are just as smart as those Soviet kids are. And so it was about trying to establish this kind of Grade A education system. What critics of the Department of Education have said is it hasn’t created that sort of system.

Wendy Dau: There are states that are successful, there are states that are not successful, there are states that waste money, there are states that don’t. And so why are we funneling and having all of these individuals work in this particular department? So, the Department of Ed. does oversee some really important things.

Wendy Dau: So I’ll give you an example. The Office of Civil Rights is housed under the Department of Ed. So, for example, if you were, say, a person that’s of a protected class. So, let’s say you’re a person of color, you’re a female, you’re economically disadvantaged. And let’s say– we’ll use me as an example. If you’re a female, okay, and you feel like you’re being discriminated against in a school setting, either at a university or in a public ed system, You can file a complaint through the Office of Civil Rights and they start an investigation.

Wendy Dau: So I’ll give you a great example. So Provo City School District is involved in what we call an OCR complaint. That complaint came from a group of individuals that are advocates for people with disabilities. And what they found was that our websites are not accessible to people with disabilities because we don’t allow people to scroll through the website– if you have to use a keyboard because you don’t have the ability, let’s say you don’t have a hand. Let’s say you have one finger, and you’re trying to scroll through a website, our websites were discriminating against people who might not have a hand, for example, might be discriminating against somebody who’s blind because it doesn’t have the ability to connect with something that can read the website out loud.

Wendy Dau: So OCR comes in and says we have this complaint, you have this amount of time to get it into compliance, and it’s not like you have until tomorrow.

Wendy Dau: So you work with an attorney from the Office of Civil Rights. You go through that process and they walk you through what it’s going to look like to get that into play. Okay, when I was a teacher at Davis High School, there was an OCR complaint. It was actually a Title IX complaint. Because the girls softball team had to go across the street to the city park to play softball.

Wendy Dau: There was no softball field on their facility. There was no intention of them ever gaining access to a softball field. And they didn’t have access to lockers, they didn’t have access– they had to walk. And so finally, a parent’s like, time out, this is not okay, and they actually were given one year to gain access to property to get a softball field, and it had certain things that were in play, and that came at a cost at that time, I want to say the year was like 20– 2008, 2010, maybe, probably an eight million dollar ask, and they had a very limited time. Well now, I Davis High School has a softball field on their property, hallelujah, thank goodness.

Wendy Dau: So Office of Civil Rights does good things. It’s helping our websites be compliant, and that’s just the right thing to do. You don’t want this not to be available to people, right? The concern is, if we dismantle the Department of Ed, where does the Office of Civil Rights go? So, for example, the attorney that Shauna’s been working with in the Office of Civil Rights just got fired.

Wendy Dau: So, we had all of these different deadlines about what we had to meet, and they’re like, We don’t really have any record of this, so we’ll be in touch about what this is going to look like. So, it’s not that it’s going to go away. It’s just the concern is, what does this look like in terms of its delay? And I can’t remember what the number was of current OCR complaints that are filed right, right now.

Wendy Dau: But it’s a lot. Because it deals with K all the way through the university level. So that becomes a concern. Like, what if something like that happens? And you feel like you need some help in getting that rectified. I think President Trump’s intention is to put that under the Department of Justice. So it’s not like it goes away.

Wendy Dau: It’s just going to go into a different department. There is some belief that they will actually get resolved more quickly, that there will be kind of this pipeline of this is really serious, this is not, and we’re going to prioritize the ones that are serious and not treat everything the same, but we don’t know.

Wendy Dau: So there’s just a lot of uncertainty with that. The other piece that the Department of Ed does is it funds all of our students with disabilities. So that comes through what is called a federal law called IDEA. And then it also funds what’s called Title I, which is for economically disadvantaged students.

Wendy Dau: And we also get funding from the federal government for students who don’t speak English as their primary language. That funding is now being cut because of the executive order that declared English as the official language. The federal government will no longer fund that. So states can fund it, but the federal government can’t.

Wendy Dau: So we get approximately as a district, so just so you kind of have an idea. Our district budget is about 162 million dollars. You’re like, wow. Or you’re like, wow, that’s not very much money. I don’t know where you’re landing on that. I feel like that’s a lot of money, but But then when I try to pay teachers, then I’m like, this is not enough money.

Wendy Dau: We get about $9 million from the federal government through IDEA and through Title I to help our schools, like for example, Franklin Elementary or Timpanogos Elementary schools that have highly impacted populations. So the concern is, what’s gonna happen to that money? Is it still gonna come in? Are we still gonna have access to it?

Wendy Dau: So the way that it’s been set up is that that will just go into probably the Department of Health and Human Services. They’ll just grant that money to the state and then the state will allocate it. Right now, they grant it to the state, but they give very specific directives about what the allocation looks like. So it’ll give the state a little bit more power over how that money gets allocated. The concern that educators have with that is what if the state legislature decides that they don’t want it to go to those things?

Wendy Dau: There are really tight controls. I used to be a Title I Director, and there’s a lot of things that you have to ensure that you’re doing with that money. So there’s concern, will that start getting siphoned off and then we’re not helping the students that need it the most? What does that look like?

Wendy Dau: And so those are some of the concerns with it. I don’t think we know enough at this point in time. I don’t feel like those things are gonna be abolished in any sort of way. There are individuals that are arguing it’ll actually be more efficient in terms of and how the money is allocated, and that there will be a little more state control over how that money is utilized.

Wendy Dau: Which a lot of people really like, rather than having somebody in Washington, D. C. determining that. My concern is always going to be, are we going to make sure that the money is getting to support the right kids?

Matt Wheatley: Thank you for that masterclass in, here’s what an opponent says, here’s what a proponent says and viewing both sides, and so like– hopefully you guys as a class you’re seeing this like how can we examine each issue from from multiple sites? Oh, so thank you for saying here’s what might happen, and here’s so– awesome.

Wendy Dau: Should I address ICE? Okay. Sorry. I forgot about that So ICE can only come into a school if they have a warrant. So the warrant has to be issued through a judge. ICE cannot issue that– has to go through a court system, And it’s handled in the same way that any police officer that’s coming into a school that has a warrant which by the way happens, you will get a warrant.

Wendy Dau: I was a principal at a high school, and we got a warrant for a kid who was involved in a drive by shooting, and they knew they could find him at school. And so they showed up and they had a warrant. Now, I as the principal, do I allow the police officer to go and grab the kid out of class and throw him to the ground and handcuff him?

Wendy Dau: No, absolutely not. So what happens is Principal Dau walks up to the classroom and is like, Hi, I need so and so. And then they come with me. We take them down into a very private space, and then that warrant gets issued, and we immediately call the parent. Like, the parent has to be involved in that, right?

Wendy Dau: So nobody’s gonna get dragged out of a school. There are very specific processes of how they sign in. As soon as that warrant comes in, They have to contact Student Services. They have to contact the assistant superintendent over secondary education because we want to verify that all of that is accurate information and that we’re not putting a kid in harm’s way.

Wendy Dau: We communicate with the parent as to what’s going on, all of those particular pieces. Where you’re seeing ICE more is not going after children. What you’re seeing with ICE is a situation where they will figure out that a parent that is not there, that is not in the country, that is undocumented, that they’re going to go to a school event, and then they’ll wait for that school event to be over, and can seize a parent at that point in time off of school grounds.

Wendy Dau: That’s the fear that exists. That is not happening widespread. You need to know that. That is– don’t let people start those rumors about that. That is not the case. But that’s what people get concerned about is, in fact, that, that the school becomes a point of contact for parents to be involved with their kid, and is that creating fear for kids, right?

Wendy Dau: To, do I even want to be going to school, because I could be fearful that, then if my parent comes to support this concert, or my parent comes to parent teacher conferences, that’s where that, where that fear lives for those individuals, if their parents happen to be undocumented in that process. And that’s what creates the– the heartache for people who are in education, because you’re putting kids in the, middle of that, because of choices parents have made.

Wendy Dau: It’s so hard, right? Great questions, please.

Matt Wheatley: I would be remiss if we didn’t talk about Tinker versus Des Moines. So, students in this class have had amazing questions about, like, what teachers can and can’t do. Oftentimes, I find myself saying, oh, that’s a great question, but I– I don’t know. In our book that talks about the Tinker case, it says there’s this delicate balance between teachers and students having freedom, first Amendment rights, even If it’s against a school policy, but it also says that there are some checks on those first amendment rights.

Matt Wheatley: And then they cite some different cases we– that we talked about. So how do you balance that? And that, that also kind of coincides with another question that there was here of, of balancing wants and needs from students, parents, faculty and expressing themselves. And anyway, what are your thoughts?

Wendy Dau: Okay. So you have way more first amendment rights then your teacher does, or than I do in this building. So, when I’m standing here in this building, I’m not here as a citizen, I’m here as a representative of Provo City School District. And so, I have to recognize that the things that I say represent the school district, because you’re seeing me in that capacity. Now when I go back home– I live in Draper– if I go back home, then, that’s not extending into that particular space to as much of a degree, right?

Wendy Dau: So for example. You have a right to come in and let’s say you wanted to pass out– maybe you were upset that the Department of Ed was getting dismantled because I’m sure teenagers care about that a ton. I don’t know. And you want to disseminate flyers about stop the dismantling of the Department of Ed.

Wendy Dau: Nobody can stop you from doing that. You absolutely could. You could fill up the school with flyers. The only thing that a principal could get irritated about is if they end up all over the floor, right? And then they could say, well, you got to go clean all of that up because you created this, right?

Wendy Dau: Something like that. Your teacher could not disseminate that. As a teacher in a classroom, and skew your view into the dismantling of the department ed is an abomination! Like, has to be very objective, and here are the pros, here are the cons, and, and has to keep that neutral stance. The way Tinker is set up, and my understanding of Tinker, and you guys can ask further questions about this, but, you have to be really careful, it gets really easy for principals and for teachers to try to regulate student speech before a disruption occurs rather than as result of it. So you can’t regulate it because you think it will cause a disruption. You have to wait till it actually does and then you can regulate the student’s speech. Now an exception to that would be if it’s creating an unsafe environment for a student.

Wendy Dau: So I’ll give you an example. I had a student that showed up at school with a flag draped to their clothing and it had machine guns all over it. And just walked through the school with it. And so that’s– that’s kind of a tricky situation, right? So I’m saying there is a principal I like, you know, do I tell this kid he can’t wear this flag that has these machine guns–

Wendy Dau: there’s no text on it, there was no context of what this was. And so, so I just pulled the kid in and had a conversation with him and said, tell me more about this flag. He’s like, you can’t take my flag. It’s my free speech. You can’t take it. I’m my mom will be over here and I was like, well, let’s just call your mom and have her come over here and let’s just have a conversation and then it was like, oh, okay.

Wendy Dau: I guess my parents now involved. And so in talking with the student, the student was making a political statement. It was, I can’t remember which school shooting that had happened, but this was in response to a group of kids that– that had started disseminating information about gun violence and how we needed to restrict guns, which was their right to do so.

Wendy Dau: Okay. He was basically stating, this is my right in response to this club that’s promoting no guns to say that I support guns and I actually support guns in schools. And– and so kind of having this conversation going through that. So the question that we had to address was, I can’t regulate that kid wearing that flag except something really interesting happened.

Wendy Dau: A whole bunch of Safe UT Tips started coming in. Reporting that a kid was wearing this flag with guns and that they happened to know that he had guns in his truck. So now it’s elevated, right, to a higher level as a result of that. So now I can argue, I can regulate that speech, and when we went and searched his car, he did have a gun in his car.

Wendy Dau: Okay? So now I can regulate that speech. If it had been, like, no, I just think guns are really cool. And, you know– so the conversation, the context matters. But if kids start being afraid, and it’s creating a disruption, a principal has some rights to regulate speech. So, when safety is, is at the center of it, it changes that conversation significantly. So we can’t just assume that something is going to do that. Now. Let’s talk about election season.

Wendy Dau: Any of you can wear a shirt for any candidate that you want to as long as it’s not a shirt that’s derogatory towards someone who believes opposite.

Wendy Dau: A teacher, however cannot do that because they have to create a neutral space in the classroom.

Wendy Dau: Our number one goal is to make sure that every student feels welcome, every student feels safe, you don’t feel threatened by the political views that you hold. Your values as a family, you have to feel at ease in those, in those instances. And so, when a teacher starts– because a teacher’s in a position of power, right?

Wendy Dau: What do they have control over? Your grade.

Wendy Dau: So if a teacher has control over your grade, and they are exhibiting that they have a particular political affinity, it could make you concerned. That because you don’t share that political affinity that that person might not be as unbiased as they should be, right?

Wendy Dau: And so that’s why we have those regulations in place is for you guys. Now what that teacher goes home, and if that teacher posts something on Facebook– oh, you’re like Facebook. What’s Facebook? On Instagram, Snapchat, those places, and states their support for a particular candidate. As long as they’re not speaking as a teacher of Provo City School District, then it’s okay.

Wendy Dau: I get into a really tricky position because there’s a ton of legislation that deals with education. And I will take a stance on that as a person that represents Provo City School District to say I either favor this or don’t favor it in those particular ways. But in terms of my own personal views, I don’t even ever post my own personal political views as, since I’ve been a superintendent, because of the fact that I don’t know that people could separate me from my position.

Wendy Dau: And that would be problematic. I want to make sure that everybody feels like they can approach me and deal with issues and they feel like there’s a fair space to work in. So, I hope that helps. A little bit.

Matt Wheatley: So can, can we take you down a little road?

Wendy Dau: Well, I’d love to go down a road of pride flags.

Matt Wheatley: So if a teacher–

Wendy Dau: You’re not– you’re avoiding all the controversial issues! I’m noticing.

Matt Wheatley: So if a teacher said, I want to display a large pride flag, district policy says no, but like, legally where do we cross this boundary of like, policy versus First Amendment rights, and like

Wendy Dau: Great question.

Matt Wheatley: Would a– Would a teacher win that battle against the policy on First Amendment Right grounds?

Wendy Dau: So I can only speak in terms of the state of Utah. So because Utah has a specific law that is put in place that says that teachers classrooms have to be void of any kind of political affiliation, they have to be neutral, they can’t promote certain ideologies, they can’t promote political parties, they can’t, all of those things.

Wendy Dau: Now, a teacher could claim that a pride flag is not a political statement. They could claim that this is just a symbol that says that all kids are welcome. That probably could go all the way through the court system. Utah has created a law for that so that there’s protection for a school district. So if a school district were to be sued by a teacher in that particular instance, the state would defend the school district in that.

Wendy Dau: Probably the ACLU would be defending the teacher, right? That would be my guess. And that could work its way through the federal courts and, and the way that would be, that that would kind of work out, is that the state law — is this state law constitutional, right? So then we’re really challenging the constitutionality of a state law and then whatever that court decision would come out with is, is how that would land.

Wendy Dau: So the way that the current policy is, is that it’s okay, right now– it’s okay for a teacher to display like they can have a rainbow– a small rainbow flag in their, you know, cup holder or something like that. Not something that’s going to create a feeling where a student would feel uncomfortable. And so that’s why it’s like, no, you don’t get to paint your whole wall a rainbow color.

Wendy Dau: That’s kind of going beyond what we would say is reasonable. There is a new law that was just passed by Representative Lee that specifically bans pride flags in schools. I believe that law goes into effect on May 7th. So we will be updating our policy to reflect that. It states that the only flags that can be displayed in a classroom are the American flag, Flags of countries and you can display flags that are tied to say for example the curriculum. So if I am doing the Civil War and I have a confederate flag and a an American flag I could display those.

Wendy Dau: My question is, can you have like a BYU flag in your classroom?Because that’s not or a University of Utah flag.

Wendy Dau: Cause that’s not tied to the curriculum. I think my assistant superintendent has a Notre Dame flag in his office, and it has never once made me want to be a Catholic. So, I don’t know that that– I don’t know that it has that kind of will over me. But I’m also an adult, and so I understand that children are very impressionable.

Wendy Dau: So I will let you know what he says. Because it doesn’t list that as being one of the exceptions. And I’ve actually had individuals who have expressed concerns about really dedicated classrooms to specific universities, that it feels sometimes a little intimidating if they don’t– if that isn’t their affinity, right?

Student 11: How do you decide what websites get blocked on Chromebooks?

Wendy Dau: Oh, well if I don’t like it, it gets blocked, so, no. Usually it’s a teacher request. Sometimes parents will request it. It just goes through a process where it goes through IT. If it is a website that is compromising student data privacy, it automatically gets blocked.

Wendy Dau: So if it’s gathering information on you that it’s not supposed to, then it will get blocked in that process.

Student 11: For example, GroupMe got blocked on the Chromebooks, but like I use that for sports. Is there a way to get that unblocked or no?

Wendy Dau: Probably not because GroupMe is violating the data privacy.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, it is. So, that’s it.

Student 11: If you’re blocking websites that violate data privacy, there’s many educational websites that do the same.

Wendy Dau: Yeah. So those have to be vetted by the district. So when a website goes through and it’s an educational website, then they have to sign a data privacy agreement and work with the school district, and we have that on file. So that’s why that’s allowed. But if it’s these outside ones and it’s not utilized for an educational purpose, then we don’t have that. So, okay. Yes. You right here.

Student 12: How much sway, or like, control would you say parents have over like your position, versus I don’t know, like, how much control do you have over what goes on in the district, and how much control do parents have over what goes on?

Wendy Dau: Oh, wow, that’s a great question. So, the school board is elected by your parents, so there’s seven members of the school board. And so, your parents have a lot of sway with their school board members. So when there are issues that they don’t like, how something’s happening, they’re going to let the school board know, and the school board lets me know.

Wendy Dau: The way that the school board operates is they tell us what the priorities are, and then I determine the how. So they say, we care about academics. We want our school district to be better; And so then the how is up to me and my team to figure out what’s gonna happen as a result of that. So they control the what, they control the vision, they control the values. They control all of those pieces. I just do the day to day piece of that.

Wendy Dau: If your parents don’t like me, then they can tell the school board, and the school board can’t fire me So that’s seven Individuals, and if four of them vote to say no bueno, we don’t like her, then you’re out.

Wendy Dau: So it, you don’t have the same protections as a superintendent to say a teacher does, or a principal does, or those pieces. You truly are very at will in that realm. I feel like our school board does a really good job of trying to balance the– and I’m not just saying that because they’re school board members here– but they know I like– they know I like them a lot– but there is a lot of balancing between what teachers want.

Wendy Dau: So this kind of goes to your question about, how do you balance teachers and parents and students and all of those pieces. That can be really really super tricky, right? I think I was brainstorming this see I was very technical and wrote down notes with chicken scratch right here. So a great example of this would be– let’s talk about parking at Timpview.

Wendy Dau: So the Board of Education, us, Principal Tu’ua, we’re all trying to figure out how do we handle parking. Because there’s not enough parking for you, right? So you want to park on all of the streets to make sure. That makes all of the neighbors very angry because we park in front of mailboxes and block their driveways and all of those pieces.

Wendy Dau: But we’re also trying to make sure you have access. And then we need to make sure teachers have access to the building. We’ve got to make sure that we’re good neighbors to all of the people that live around here, because we would like to continue the construction of Timpview, which isn’t going to happen if we make all of those people angry.

Wendy Dau: And so, that’s a balancing act. So, so part of this is saying, what help can the school provide so that students are following these specific procedures that we’ve set up for parking, but we also need to make sure it’s accessible for kids. That’s a, that’s a really kind of maybe a dumb example, but It’s one of those pieces.

Wendy Dau: The biggest piece the board is going to wrestle with right now is teacher salaries. Teachers salaries need to be raised. We don’t pay as much as Alpine and Nebo pay. And so it makes teachers, sometimes our best teachers, leave to go to other districts. We have a lot of students who have a lot of needs and a lot of challenges in Provo City School District because we’re a more diverse district than Nebo and Alpine.

Wendy Dau: And by the way, we are outperforming both of, both of those school districts in terms of our academics. So our teachers are doing a better job. They’re getting paid less to do so, and so, with the amount of money that we’re given, one of the things that we can Do is we can go ask the taxpayers and say, we would we need you to pay a little bit more in property taxes. So that we can make our teachers pay competitive.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, and you know what every parent’s gonna say to that? No! Like I do not want that. Now some parents might be okay with that, right? But especially if I’m a person that doesn’t have any kids in school, do I want my property taxes to go up? Probably not, you know, and so that becomes a good balancing act.

Wendy Dau: You guys are awesome!

Wendy Dau: This was really fun. guys

Wendy Dau: Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of What’s Up with the Sup. As always all episodes will be posted on the district website, YouTube, and anywhere you get your podcasts. If you have any topics or questions you would like us to discuss on the podcast, please email us at podcast@provo.edu.

Wendy Dau: And don’t forget to join us again next week for another new episode of What’s Up with the Sup. Have a great weekend, everyone.

Spencer Tuinei
  • Communication Specialist
  • Spencer Tuinei
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