Dear school board members,

On June 20, KPCW reported you will renew Superintendent Jill Gildea’s contract this year because her performance has been "excellent."

We hold a different view of Dr. Gildea’s record, and respectfully request outgoing board members leave any potential contract renewal for the 2025 school board to decide. We believe it aligns with good governance for incoming board members to make a decision on Dr. Gildea.

We also believe PCSD will benefit from finding a new superintendent who places a higher priority on transparency, accountability, and following laws.

Our reasons include: 

• Dr. Gildea is by far the highest paid superintendent in Utah with a compensation package of $415,000 annually. She earns $87 per pupil she oversees, compared to Superintendent Shane Farnsworth at Alpine (Utah’s largest district), who earns $4.50 per pupil or $342,000 annually. She oversees 7 campuses compared to 91 that Mr. Farnsworth oversees.
• Since hiring Dr. Gildea, the district’s student population is approaching a 20% decline. Public school funding is based on student population, so spending nearly half a million dollars annually on a superintendent may be a poor financial choice.
• Dr. Gildea has never had a performance evaluation since being hired in 2018.

Extravagant compensation and lack of performance reviews might not be so alarming if not for Dr. Gildea’s sub-par performance, which has negatively impacted district employees, families and taxpayers. 

On Dr. Gildea’s watch:

• PCSD has been plagued by management failings in code compliance, resulting in two local criminal investigations as well as damaging and embarrassing findings by the federal Office for Civil Rights and the state auditor.
• The federal investigation into bullying found numerous violations of law around employee training and tracking of bullying and harassment.
• Construction project failures in Summit County and Park City have increased project costs to taxpayers, likely by millions, according to media reports and PCSD spokespeople such as the district's legal counsel and the public information team.
• The unlawful storing of dirt at Treasure Mtn Jr High for over six years exposed students and employees to harmful levels of lead and arsenic and prompted city, county, state and federal agencies to step in and threaten PCSD before the district finally removed the health hazard. District officials repeatedly lied to the public about the piles’ dangers and history.
• A state audit found PCSD is not meeting required standards for some student groups - inexcusable in a district with PCSD’s resources. The audit also cited the district for irresponsible use of taxpayer money in the construction project failures.

As supporters of PCSD, we strongly believe you can do much better for our children, our tax dollars, and our friends and family who work for the district. It’s time for accountability - and that means a change at the top.

Sincerely, 

Josh Mann
Karl Persson
And others as signed in this petition

Update: The original petition cited a 20% drop in enrollment. This has been changed to "approaching 20%" where we are comparing 4,979 students in 2017-2018 to Business Administrator Randy Upton's comment on June 20 that enrollment will likely be below 4,200 this year.