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Новости сообщества, 3 февраля 2025 года

Каждую неделю суперинтендант Венди Дау делится с жителями города Прово видеоинформацией, в которой рассказывает о важных новостях и событиях в школьном округе Прово. Настраивайтесь на каждую неделю, чтобы быть в курсе всех ключевых событий и событий в наших школах.

Hello, Provo City. I am Superintendent Dau from the Provo City School District, and today is Monday, February 3rd. We hope you’ve all had a fantastic weekend. It feels like January is always a really long month, and we are grateful to be moving right along. The school year is going by quickly. I just wanted to make you aware of a couple of situations that have emerged.

You may have noticed a communication that came out from the school district last week about responding to some rumors about ICE raids at some of our schools today. There’s been nothing that’s corroborated with that. We are working very closely with our student services team and our assistant superintendents and our principals.

They know what they need to do in specific situations and that information has been shared with them about how to handle anyone that comes into a school seeking access to a particular student. We have really specific protocols and procedures that are in place. We do not allow students to- anyone to have access to a student if it’s not a parent or a guardian or a law enforcement official that has to have a specific warrant through a judge so that allows them to have access to that particular child.

And so we have really strict protocols about how those things are handled within our schools. We just want to reassure you that, about that and let you know that our students are very, very safe in our schools and that that we work closely with lots of different agencies to ensure that that is the case.

We appreciate our relationships with Provo City Police Department, and various entities, Division of Child and Family Services, whomever it is, to ensure that our kids are safe in our schools. If you have questions or concerns, you can reach out to your school principal. They’re happy to help you with any of those concerns.

You can also reach out to student services. To director Jason Garrison, or you can reach out to our assistant superintendents, Daryl Jensen. He is over secondary education or Jared Sides, who is over elementary education. I did want to make you aware that on February 11th, we have a school board meeting and during the study session.

We will be having the results of our boundary and feasibility study shared. That kind of sounds like, well, what in the heck is that? That is really where they go in and look at trends of Provo’s growth. They look at the capacity of each of our buildings. They make some recommendations about how we can be more efficient with our resources, they look at specific programs such as, you know, our Gifted and Talented programs, our Dual Language Immersion programs, and just really try to help us find some ways in which we can make sure that we’re using the resources that we have in the most efficient way. possible. We also know that our school board is very dedicated to the concept of neighborhood schools.

But in order to make things more efficient, sometimes that requires changes in boundaries. Sometimes whatever that is, those are all decisions that will be addressed and be looked at and worked through with district leadership as well as with our school board members in the next few months. As we’re seeking ways to really maximize our efficiency, and the services, and the education that we provide to our students.

So there’s many, many factors that come into play here, but I just want to make you aware of those things so that you can tune into those conversations. As you hear different things, you can reach out to school board members, you can reach out to myself to gain greater clarification. We will have further meetings and discussions about these particular issues so that nothing is coming as a surprise to anyone.

You may also be aware that in our last board meeting, the Board of Education has issued their intent to issue some lease revenue bonds. The amount that they are seeking to release would be 70 million dollars. We’ve been talking about this in several different board meetings. So there’s really two different ways in which a school district can raise revenue for facilities.

That is not when we’re trying to update and build new facilities. That isn’t built into our schools specific budgets that are given by the state. So they give us the right to be able to utilize property taxes to be able to do that because they know that the specific funding that just comes through what we call the weighted per pupil unit, that’s just enough to cover expenditures of basic operating expenses as well as the education of students. So if we need to update a building for safety reasons then we utilize property taxes as a way to do that. So we’re going to be having two community meetings. You should be getting a postcard probably by the end of this week or the beginning of next week.

The first meeting will be on Thursday, February 13th at 6:00 PM in Timpview High School’s Choir Room. The second meeting will be held on February 20th at six o’clock p.m. at the Dixon site in the auditorium. And the purpose of this is to really describe what the lease revenue bonds will do with property taxes, because we have some bonds that are falling off.

We don’t have to issue all of the bonds at the same time. Why are we choosing a lease revenue bond rather than a general obligation bond, which has to go on the ballot in November? Um, the reason for that is twofold. One is the interest rates on the lease revenue bond are pretty much the same as they are in a general obligation bond.

We’ve been working with Zion’s Bank on this process to really make sure that we have the best financial information that we can get. The second piece is if we wait for a general obligation bond to appear on the ballot, um, in November, then we can’t start the next phase of construction at Timpview High School until the spring of next year.

And we would really like to keep going with that construction because we still have so many areas of that building that are unsafe that need to be addressed ASAP. And it’s just something that we have to do. We can’t have students that are, that are going to school in an unsafe facility. And so we need to move on this.

Sooner rather than later and really be mindful of the environment that we’re providing for our students and our employees to ensure that things are up to code and that we don’t have these safety issues any longer. So that 70 million will also include a design portion to go towards the Dixon site.

So we don’t want to create a design for that. site until we have all of the information back from the boundary and feasibility study and look at all of those particular issues first and foremost and make sure that what we choose to do with that site is the best possible. But we do want to allot that design money in there so that our Dixon community knows that we are very committed to making sure that that property is going to become just an asset to that community and really support us in the education of our kids and helping our district to be a destination district.

So we want to get into that in greater detail. So we want to have those two meetings where you can come and ask. questions. We know we discuss it in board meeting, but sometimes people don’t want to tune into board meetings because there’s so many different topics that are being discussed. And this really allows us to go into it in much greater detail.

Our goal is to be very transparent about what this will look like to allow you to ask questions. I know a lot of people are like, how come school districts don’t save up money for that? What does this look like? And all of those things can be addressed in this particular meeting. Myself and our business administrator, as well as many school board members will be there to address questions.

So just wanted you to be aware of those dates. Um, and then also our February 11th board meeting where that boundary and feasibility study will be discussed. Our board meetings are always available on YouTube. And so you can either watch it live or you can go back and watch it after the fact. Sometimes that’s preferable because then you can fast forward through different pieces that maybe aren’t as much of an interest to you.

But we just want to make sure that that you have all of the information that you need and you know who you can reach out to if you have further questions And would like to have further conversations about that. We want to ensure that we are working with our community in this process. I just want you to know that I’ve been out in schools I do listening tours with our faculties and just the great things that are happening across Provo City School District is just phenomenal I sat in a in an English class at Independence High School where the students were reading the Princess Bride and talking about vocabulary and just really diving into that particular story and learning the specific standards that are tied to the English curriculum and just how deliberate the teacher was just how much time had gone into lesson planning for that and, and how engaged the kids were. And that is a huge tribute to our teachers that build really great relationships with our students. There really is a tremendous desire for our teachers just want to be successful and be effective with our students.

So really appreciate that. I appreciate those of you that are involved in connecting with legislators about specific education issues. We have real concerns as district leadership, as well as, so does our board of education about legislation that tends to villainize our educators particularly when it comes to collective bargaining, which is the most recent bill that’s being discussed right now and really trying to work with we work very closely with our teachers and our associations so that we can ensure that they have the best working conditions and salary compensation that we possibly can provide, and we problem solve issues together.

I’ve never seen that as a negative. So just want you to be aware of that. Another piece of legislation that keeps coming forward is the vouchers. It’s known as the Utah Fits All scholarship becomes really important as we start thinking about what does this look like? Provo City School District has chosen not to be a vendor for this particular scholarship.

Just because of the regulatory impact that it has. And we really feel like that this program should not be expanded until we have greater accountability as to where that money is going and what benefit it’s providing for students. We have all sorts of things that are in place where we report data to you and show you what it is that we’re working on.

We have a strategic plan with very ambitious goals, and we feel like, yes, our parents are very much involved in that, but we also feel like we have an obligation when taxpayer dollars are being used for that, that there should be some accountability for that as well. So we’d like to see more of that in place.

So if you see fit, please feel free to reach out to legislators about different issues that are coming up, and we’ll try to highlight some of those bills as they’re coming forward for discussion as well. It’s our duty as district leadership to ensure that our public schools have the resources that they need to thrive and to provide the best education and best environment for our students.

So with that, we want to wish all of you a fantastic week. Bye now.

Alexander Glaves
  • Специалист по социальным сетям/маркетингу
  • Александр Глейвс
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