Who is accountable in the Davis School District?

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Guest Commentary
Standard Examiner Feb. 2 & Deseret News Feb. 4

Thanks to some truly outstanding teachers, the Davis School District is one of the top districts in the state and four of the District high schools were listed among Newsweek’s top high schools in the country. However, recent events have provided an important reminder why parents and taxpayers must avoid becoming complacent and the $4.3 million Title I scandal reminds us how easy it is to become complacent when we trust people. Just as it was naive for a Superintendent to fail to put in place reasonable controls over the District’s use of Title I funds, parents are similarly naive when we fail to require that the administration justify their actions. As someone who was very involved in the recent boundary debate, but unaffected by the boundary changes, I would like to share some questions I have after reading hundreds of emails sent to DavisParents.org.

Why is the Davis School District fighting parents in an expensive legal battle over their open meeting violations? Why ignore the opinion of the 2nd District Court, the Editorial Boards of all three local daily papers, the Davis County Republican Chairman and the Democratic Chairman who have all been critical of the District’s failure to comply with the letter or intent of this law? What public benefit can result from fighting to resist open government?

Even though Bountiful High School had 170 empty seats this school year, the District denied seventy of the ninety students requesting a variance to Bountiful High. When the Sunset Hollow community petitioned to move out of the portables at Woods Cross High and into the empty classrooms at Bountiful High, why did the District deny this request in favor of plans to expand Woods Cross and bus students away from the 300 empty seats at Davis High? How many more teachers could we hire, or text books could we buy, if we simply filled our current school buildings rather than busing children away from empty classrooms?

I recently met one family who applied for a variance to Bountiful High so their daughter could attend the same school as her older sister. Unfortunately, the administration believes that variances hurt the resident school and so this variance request and numerous appeals were denied. The family even offered to send their senior from Bountiful to Woods Cross so their children could be together, but the athletic programs wouldn’t allow that to happen. Only after six months of persistent pressure through letters, phone calls and personal visits did the district allow this distraught family to stay together. When did it become appropriate to hold children hostage to protect programs rather than using programs to benefit a child?

We applaud the Salt Lake School District for their open enrollment policy. In that district 25% of the high school students choose their school. The Davis School District limits school choice to 2%. As public educators mobilize to fight vouchers, would they consider speaking up to help the children in the Davis School District get “public school choice”? If public educators are truly fighting for our children, public school choice should be easy to support. In the real world, if a supplier could force their customers to buy only from them, there would be no motivation to improve, or even maintain the quality of the product or service. As a father who will have children in the public school system for another fourteen years, I fear the mediocrity that is sure to follow if our public school administrators have no accountability and patrons have no choice.

Randy Smith
Father
DavisParents.org, Spokesman