Senior Kohler Rauzi wasn’t sure at first whether to attend Wasatch High School or the new Deer Creek High School, but the new school offered an opportunity impossible to pass up.

“There are no traditions, no stories that everyone tells, no expectations and no culture. But we get to create all of that,” he said at Deer Creek High School’s ribbon cutting ceremony and open house on Wednesday. 

The $169 million school is ready to welcome students on Aug. 18. Only a few finishing touches to the theater are left to do.

Former Wasatch School District Superintendent Paul Sweat noted at the ceremony that the building will soon turn into a “living organism” where students will build their futures. 

The first signs of life could be seen at the open house. Aspiring athletes mimed making shots on the basketball court. 

Students wandered into health sciences teacher Jordanne Davidson’s classroom for a demonstration of the new Anatomage table — used to dissect digitized cadavers — and left the room either green in the face or with a gleam in their eyes. 

Meanwhile, members of the student government were hard at work enlisting elementary schoolers to their cause, asking them to pledge to be a Deer Creek Riverhawk instead of a Wasatch Wasp when they grow up.

Rauzi, the student government’s vice president, wants to create a culture in which every student feels seen. He believes the easiest way to do that is by starting conversations. 

Rauzi started his high school experience somewhat isolated from his peers.

“When I was a freshman, I spent a lot of time in the front office, not because I was in trouble, but because my best friends were the ladies who worked there,” he said.

Eventually, a few seniors who frequented the office took him under their wings. Rauzi forged friendships with them that lasted even after they had graduated.

“They probably have no idea how much those simple conversations meant to me,” he said.

Now a senior himself, Rauzi hopes to start those conversations with other students. He’s done the math: If each of the student government’s 28 members befriended 47 of their peers, then every student at Deer Creek High School would have someone in their corner.

Ensuring that every teen gets care and attention is why the Wasatch County School District set out to build its second high school in the first place. 

Deer Creek High School Principal Justin Kelly, formerly principal of Wasatch High School, said, “It was sad to me at graduation that a student would come across the stage, and I would think, ‘I don’t know their name, and I can’t remember seeing them very much.’”

With more than 2,700 students enrolled at Wasatch High School last year, forgetting a few students’ names is inevitable. This upcoming academic year, that population has been halved, with the high schools’ enrollment numbers within only two students of each other, according to Superintendent Garrick Peterson.

Peterson added that at-risk students will be especially impacted by the second high school.

“We’re going to be able to have kids coming to school, and their names are going to be known better. Their struggles are going to be known better. We’re going to be able to react to them better,” he said. “If we can make a difference for just a few of those kids and change their lives forever and start to change their stories, there’s power to that.”

With smaller class and club sizes, students at Wasatch High School and Deer Creek High School have been eager this year to try new things, said school board member Breanne Dedrickson.

“I know kids in my own neighborhood who wouldn’t have gone out for student government before, but they thought, ‘Man, there’s extra spots. I don’t know if anyone’s going to try it at Deer Creek. I’m going to try it.’ And they got involved for the first time in something they never tried before,” she said. “That’s what this is about.”

Student government adviser Jessica Firth explained that the students have been planning the high school’s first year since May. They’ve designed merchandise, planned a spirit week and come up with cheers for football games that tease, “You wish you were a Riverhawk!”

Members of the student government hope there’s more to their relationship with Wasatch High School than a friendly rivalry on the football field.

“They were our people just a few months ago,” Firth said. “We have goals to do service projects with the Wasatch student government and keep connections so that we’re not just rivals, but we’re also collaborators.”

The motto the students came up with, “Together we soar,” was in line with the Riverhawk mascot.

“We don’t want anybody to feel like they’re doing this alone,” Firth said. 

Wasatch County has come a long way since its first Wasatch High School, a 20-by-40-foot building built in 1908, as former Superintendent Sweat pointed out. The school district has since moved the high school to new buildings twice — first in 1964, then again in 2009 — to meet the needs of the community. The opening of the Deer Creek High School continues the trend of cultivating the Heber Valley’s greatest resource: its children. 

To Sweat, the two high schools embody a quote from philosopher and educator John Dewey: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”

The post Wasatch County’s second high school opens appeared first on Park Record.

Jenna Vollman dropped out of high school as a freshman with only three credits and a 1.1 GPA to her name. Now 35, Vollman received her diploma in November through the Wasatch County Jail’s adult education program, which the Wasatch County School District facilitates. 

Vollman, who has been out of prison for four months and now lives in Orem, said graduating is the first goal she’s actually accomplished in her life.

“I would always doubt myself growing up. Like, ‘There’s no way I can do that. I’m not smart enough, or I don’t have the patience to do it.’ I would lie to myself and not give myself a chance,” she said. “Now that I’m giving myself a chance, it’s the best feeling ever.”

Becoming a more confident person has been a lifelong, uphill battle for Vollman. 

When she was 5, her father died by suicide, creating separation anxiety so severe Vollman required a prescription. That snowballed into self-medication in her early teens. She started using methamphetamine and discovered heroin and fentanyl in her late 20s. 

“I would literally try any substance to not feel the feelings that I felt,” she said.

Though she had dropped out of school in ninth grade, by 17, Vollman was determined to reenroll. That dream was crushed when she realized she was pregnant.

“I just didn’t even think about school anymore. It was only about having a child,” she said.

Vollman now has four children who live in Pocatello, Idaho, with the rest of her family. She lost custody of her children during what she described as a vicious cycle of addiction treatment, relapse and homelessness throughout her adult years living in Utah County.

In that time, she had several run-ins with the law. Ultimately, Vollman was sentenced to prison at the Utah State Correctional Facility in January 2025, stemming from theft, vehicle burglary and drug possession charges, all misdemeanors, as well as a third-degree felony charge for unlawful use of a bank card.

“I was basically trying to do probation from 2023 to the end of 2024 and just could not keep myself out of trouble or clean. That’s when they eventually sent me to prison,” Vollman said.

After her sentencing, Vollman set a goal of obtaining her high school diploma through the prison’s adult education program by her Board of Pardons & Parole hearing in December. She was transferred to Wasatch County Jail in April 2025 due to high occupancy at the prison. 

At that time, the jail was between teachers for the program. Then, the Wasatch County School District hired retired teacher Kathy Carr that summer to teach the course. 

Carr began her part-time role at the jail because she desired to make a difference in inmates’ lives.

“I care so much for people in the system and want to offer what I can for them to change,” she said. “I’m so proud of (Vollman) and our other students who realize their potential.”

The jail’s General Educational Development, or GED, program is available to inmates depending on qualifications like good behavior, the crime they were convicted for and their sentence. 

Inmates must earn 27 credits through self-guided state curriculum packets, class time and tests on English, math, science and social studies. Any credits they originally earned in high school carry over.

Vollman also received credits by working full time at the jail’s kitchen for $1 an hour.

Carr visits the jail every Monday morning for a two-hour class in the library to help inmates with any subjects they are struggling with. Then, she hosts an art class, providing the supplies herself. 

“It was very uplifting, and you could see how much she actually cared about all of the women in there that were struggling and needing some lifting up,” Vollman said. “I love Kathy. She’s an amazing lady, and I know that it’s only the beginning of her journey with Wasatch (County Jail). She’s going to do great things there.”

Carr has now helped six inmates graduate the program. Vollman was her first, receiving her diploma in her cap and gown in November — one month before the deadline she’d set for herself.

“I did cry a lot, but it was a happy cry. I hadn’t seen my parents in over a year when they came (from Idaho for the graduation ceremony), so that was really special,” she said.

Vollman was “shocked” that she’d accomplished her goal. She’d pursued her GED about eight years ago but gave up after returning to drugs.

In Vollman’s experience, being unhoused has always been the No. 1 cause of her relapses.

“It kind of sounds like an excuse, but when you’re a drug addict, and you become homeless, you revert back to your surviving ways. Drugs are the only survival tool that you have when you’re homeless,” she said.

Thankfully, Vollman’s had no trouble keeping a roof over her head thanks to a friend from her teenage years, who is offering Vollman a room free of charge in exchange for nannying and babysitting duties three days a week.

The experience of being “part of a family” again is preparing Vollman to reunite with her children, which she hopes to do after saving up money to move to Idaho. 

But for now, Vollman is learning to be comfortable living without family or a partner to fall back on. 

“I had codependency issues, and I still do. I’m working on them with my therapist right now,” she said. “I would jump from one relationship to the next and not give myself any time to actually heal or grow. I’ve actually been single since I went to prison, and it’s been the most amazing thing to be able to love myself, finally.”

Now that she’s graduated, Vollman hopes to pursue her associate degree and become certified as a peer support specialist. Her ultimate goal is to become a substance use disorder counselor and open her own rehabilitation center. She said she believes her story of resilience after losing everything can make a difference in addicts’ lives.

After her experience in prison, Vollman knows that “drugs are no longer an option.”

“Even on the hard days, I don’t get to quit and just get high. That’s not the option,” she said. “The option is to do the hard thing and to go after the goals that I’ve been setting. Because I know that I’m capable of it.”

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The Wasatch County School District could increase its general fund by $11 million for the upcoming fiscal year, without raising property taxes.

The general fund includes expenditures for supplies, textbooks, equipment and professional development, but the biggest piece of the pie is salaries and benefits, which make up about $122 million of the nearly $136 million total. 

All categories of general fund will see some increase in fiscal year 2027.

Some new costs include the school district’s addition of a childcare facility in Deer Creek High School for school district employees to use and increased spending on early literacy programs. The majority of the spending increase, $10 million, will go to salaries and benefits, including 4% raises for employees.

“We have nearly 1,200 employees now. Obviously, our most valuable and most costly resource is our people,” said Business Administrator Jason Watt. “The board has prioritized this in recent years as a way to attract and retain high-quality educators.”

The increase also accounts for new hires at Deer Creek High School, which opens in August. 

While most staffing occurred by divvying up existing Wasatch High School staff between the two schools, some roles necessitated hiring externally. For example, it would be impractical to divide one theater teacher between two high schools. 

Watt said the school district hired eight teachers, as well as custodial and maintenance staff, secretaries, an instructional coach, a librarian, an athletic director, a Hispanic liaison, school resource officers and a nurse.

With the new high school also comes increased spending on transportation, maintenance and utilities. None of that will necessitate an increase in property taxes, which make up about two-thirds of the school district’s budget.

“We have been budgeting for this year for some time,” Watt said. “We are really pleased that we are able to cover those additional costs with existing revenues and will not be approaching the public for additional revenues through the truth in taxation process.”

While general fund expenditures are increasing since the previous fiscal year, the school district will spend less money overall this upcoming fiscal year. The school district spent over $250 million in fiscal year 2026, and estimates spending about $193 million in fiscal year 2027.

The primary reason for that decrease is a reduction in capital project spending. The district spent $111 million last fiscal year — largely to construct Deer Creek High School — and will spend $41 million in the upcoming year.

The school board held a public hearing on June 16, during which two school district employees made comments in support of the budget.

Wasatch High School Assistant Principal Drew Camps Wofford expressed her excitement about Deer Creek High School and the new childcare program while holding her toddler, Scout.

“As a parent, (I’m) super stoked to have kids … in a district where you know that they’re doing the right things to take care of our kids while I’m taking care of other people,” she said.

Wasatch High School agricultural science teacher Kody Clyde thanked the school board for its “continued support and confidence in teachers.”

“I can promise that the teachers will continue to take care of the community’s greatest resource, which is, of course, the students. You will continue to see an increase in student academic performance. I can also assure you that Wasatch will continue to be the best district in the state,” he said. “I personally would like to thank you for my job. I feel so lucky to have the greatest career in the greatest community.”

The school board will meet June 29 at 6:30 p.m. to vote on adopting the budget. The meeting will include an opportunity for public comment.

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Every year, 78-year-old Rocky Mountain Middle School custodian Dean Davis swears he’ll retire, but he always comes up with some reason not to. 

His latest, morbid excuse? 

“I’m looking for two holes (for my wife, Carol, and me) to get buried in. And when I get them all paid for (then I’ll retire),” he said.

But Jade Chavez, the middle school’s Spanish liaison and secretary, isn’t taking any excuses from Davis this year. That’s why she organized a GoFundMe for community members to help fund her friend’s retirement. 

Chavez has worked at the school for three years; Davis for 18. The pair are usually the last people in the building on a given school day, so they’ve gotten pretty close.

“I love learning about him, and he gives me advice,” Chavez said. 

Davis experiences daily pain in his legs, hands and back, but never complains and rarely takes a sick day. 

“This body of mine, it doesn’t know how to quit,” Davis said. 

Some of his health issues stem from a battle with stage IV colon cancer 18 years ago.

“They took a big ball out of me, like a baseball,” he said about his tumor. “I came out of that alive, but I keep telling my wife I’m dead. When you get cancer, and when you get all them treatments, it takes a lot out of you.”

Namely, over a year of chemotherapy left him with peripheral neuropathy, an umbrella term for conditions involving damage to the nerves outside of the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms include numbness, tingling and pain.

“It gets you in your hands and your feet up to your knees almost, and you can’t walk that great. That’s how come I have problems,” he said. “I take medicines for it, but you always have pain.”

Like a 31-year-old “big sister,” as Davis put it, Chavez is always giving her friend a hard time for overexerting himself — for example, when the 78-year-old custodian climbs onto countertops to dust out of reach spots or skips meals. 

“He shouldn’t be working, and he’s always in pain,” Chavez said. “The first year I started working here, I asked him, ‘How would you feel if I made a TikTok about you?’ And he did not like that. So, I want to respect that and not do it, but I did it now because I just can’t see him like that.”

When Davis learned about the GoFundMe, he was embarrassed.

“Having people look at me like, ‘Oh, he’s old. He should be retired’? No, that’s not me,” he said.

As Chavez put it, she organized the fundraiser not because Davis has to retire, but because he deserves to.

Davis has been working ever since he graduated from Grantsville High School in Tooele County six decades ago. He milked cows at a local dairy for 32 years. Then he worked maintenance and custodial jobs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Lucas Aerospace in Park City, Bear Creek Country Kitchens in Heber City and the Zermatt Utah Resort & Spa in Midway. 

When Davis tried to imagine his retirement, all he could think of was more work. He plans to spend his days pulling weeds in his backyard. He can’t see himself “sitting in the house all day long watching television.”

But when pushed, he admitted he’d like to travel to Georgia and Iowa to visit family. Montana and Idaho, just for fun. He might even go on an Alaskan cruise with his wife, who has been begging him to retire.

“I think she put her up to it,” Davis said, pointing to Chavez.

He’ll also, of course, spend some time planning his funeral. He’d like his hearse to be his baby blue 1986 Dodge Ram pickup truck, which he inherited from his father when he died in 2000. Somehow, the car has only 88,000 miles on it.

“I want to use it for the coffin … and let somebody step on the gas, and I go flying out,” he joked. 

Davis’ retirement GoFundMe has already raised nearly $6,000 and can be found at tinyurl.com/y38wn3pu.

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Hands hovering over buzzers, four Wasatch High School students in military uniform answered obscure trivia questions asked by retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Denise Harris.

“The ancient ouroboros motif shows,” Harris began, before junior Joe Grayson hit the buzzer, answering that a serpent eats its own tail.

Other questions left the quartet stumped, like when they were asked to name the novels “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf and “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe based on only a few plot details.

These four students — sophomores Hilary Palmer and Jonas Bevan and juniors Emilia Charlton and Grayson — are participants in the Leadership & Academic Bowl, a club that is part of the high school’s Air Force Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program, known as JROTC. 

On Friday, they will be traveling to Washington, D.C., with their instructors as the only Academic Bowl team in Utah to advance to this year’s national finals at The Catholic University of America. 

JROTC, an elective course with voluntary after-school clubs and service projects, uses the roleplaying of military service to instill self-discipline, civic engagement and leadership in student “cadets.”

Wasatch High School’s Air Force JROTC unit began in 2017. It’s the only one in the Wasatch Back and has about 70 cadets currently enrolled.

The elective course teaches the expected, such as the history and science of aviation, as well as other, less military-specific lessons, like how to fill out a college application, land a job interview or manage finances.

“We’re just trying to build future citizens that can affect their community in a positive way, giving them the tools to be a good human. … Learn how to be a follower. Learn how to be a team player. Learn how to be a leader,” Harris explained. “We hope they just become better people. They don’t have to become better military people, but just better people.”

Some clubs within JROTC focus on physical fitness, marksmanship or cyber security. 

Meanwhile, the Academic Bowl was created to prepare students for the ACT or SAT standardized tests they take in their junior year. Cadets answer questions in categories including math, English, science, social studies, financial literacy, college readiness and current events. Math, Harris said, is always the trickiest subject.

All students in Wasatch High School’s Air Force JROTC unit take the Academic Bowl practice test at the beginning of the year, but often it is only those who performed exceptionally well who decide to join Academic Bowl. 

Advancing to nationals involves making it past two rounds of tests. Sixteen Air Force/Space Force JROTC units will be advancing to nationals out of the 715 who took the first test. 

These 16 teams will compete against each other this weekend to determine which will represent the Air Force in the final round against the top teams in other military branches of JROTC, including Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Coast Guard.

Wasatch High School’s Academic Bowl team advanced to the national competition and got second place in the Air Force qualifier in 2022 and 2023. 

“It was a race to the buzzer,” Harris said about the final tiebreaker question in the 2023 competition.

Harris and the cadets this year are hoping to take home the gold — and its prize of bragging rights. But, Harris noted, they’ve already won in a sense: Outside of souvenirs and meals, their trip was entirely paid for by the College Options Foundation, the organization that runs the Academic Bowl.

The thing that excites Grayson most about the trip is meeting other cadets from across the United States and its territories. He said he was “timid” when he joined JROTC as a freshman. Now, he’s a more confident leader — but still calls himself “antisocial and an introvert,” despite his obvious love for his teammates.

“The people, in general, are the main reasons I stick around. It’s like a second family to me,” he said.

Grayson will likely join the Army or Marines after high school. 

Cadets Palmer and Bevan are also looking forward to military service. 

Palmer wants to join the Air Force as a stepping stone toward becoming an anesthesiologist. Military scholarships, she hopes, will help her pay for medical school.

Palmer is the commander of the Academic Bowl team. She said JROTC has made her someone more willing to serve others, stand up for what’s right and be a leader. She recently became cheer captain, a role she doesn’t think she would have volunteered for if she hadn’t flexed her leadership muscles in JROTC.

Meanwhile, Bevan has wanted to join the Navy ever since he was a kid listening to stories from a Navy SEAL neighbor about the excitement and grueling physical training. 

Additionally, Bevan’s father is a foreign service officer, meaning Bevan has lived in countries like Gabon, China and Albania for much of his life. He’s lived with his grandparents in Wasatch County since his freshman year, when his father was stationed in the Central African Republic.

“We always lived in embassies, and there were a lot of families near us (with) parents who spent time in the military or were working for the Department of Defense while working at the embassy. So, I was just surrounded by veterans or current military officers. I grew up with a lot of those people,” Bevan said.

He added that learning military protocol and ceremonies, like how to march or fold an American flag, have prepared him for what he’ll deal with in the actual military. 

“I’ll be ahead of kids in the future when I do join,” he said.

Three years of JROTC service also equates to two promotions in any branch other than the Marine Corps as soon as a student enlists, according to Harris.

That’s why JROTC models the actual military as much as possible, which can be a sticking point for students and parents alike. Cadets must follow a military dress code, right down to their haircuts, and those who are even 30 seconds late to the first-period class must request permission to enter the classroom and explain why they are late.

“You’re following a system. You’re learning discipline,” Harris explained. “We’re trying to build you into a person that’s going to succeed when you leave here, so we’re taking the training wheels off.”

She said the values JROTC instills are useful no matter what career path a cadet chooses.

Charlton, for example, joined JROTC three years ago because she was dead set on becoming an FBI agent and had heard that military service would be a good gateway into that career. 

She’s since changed her mind and isn’t sure what she wants to do with her career, but she’s stayed in JROTC all the same.

Charlton was a bit of a British fish out of water when her family moved from England to Utah seven years ago, all so her father could pursue his dream of becoming a ski instructor in Park City.

The culture shock first came with bathrooms being inexplicably referred to as restrooms, then, the food, and finally, her American peers, who seemed, by and large, more extroverted and bold than she was.

By the beginning of high school, she found company in literature more often than people and wasn’t sure how to prepare for the ACT or navigate the differences in university here versus in England. 

JROTC helped her with all of those problems — culminating in an above average score on the ACT this year — all while giving her an outlet to express her love for literature in Academic Bowl. 

“Every Tuesday, we’re answering questions and laughing,” she said. “It’s just super fun because then you’re shouting, ‘Oh, I know this answer!’ and then you’re arguing about it, and you’re just sort of making fun of each other. It’s that companionship.”

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With more than 600 students, the Class of 2026 constituted one of Wasatch High School’s largest classes ever since 1912, likely for the last time, with class sizes set to shrink when the new Deer Creek High School opens in August.

Among those graduates were 67 who maintained a 4.0 average throughout high school, as well as students who snagged scholarships, seals of biliteracy, associate’s degrees and other impressive accolades, explained Principal Ryan Bishop during Thursday’s graduation ceremony at the high school football field. 

Some other records were altogether less impressive.

“Just to keep things grounded, this class also managed to rack up well over 1,000 unexcused absences,” Bishop joked, to hoots and hollers from the graduating class. “We are not proud of you for that. And just to top it off, a few hundred parking tickets along the way. So, yes, you definitely left your mark in several different ways.”

Bishop added it is not the impressive GPAs, test scores or awards he wants students to remember, but the peers, family members and teachers who helped them through the journey.

“I hope you carry humility with you. The world will tell you to focus on recognition, comparison and proving yourself. But humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s remembering that no one succeeds alone,” he said.

That rang true for co-valedictorian Brynnlea Scheuller, who in her speech compared the high school experience to climbing Mount Timpanogos, whose snowcapped peaks she’s gazed at from her front window every morning since she was five. She finally took the plunge and climbed the mountain last year.

“Getting to the top requires waking up at 4 a.m. to beat the heat, hiking 7 miles straight uphill and earning at least three blisters and a shoe full of rocks along the way,” she said. “Just like this mountain, our lives have two sides: a side that everyone admires from a distance and a side we keep hidden. People often see the photo at the summit, the part that looks easy and put together, but the real story is in what happens before the picture is taken. It happens during the switchbacks, in the moments when no one’s watching, when we are tired and unsure but decide to keep going.”

Co-valedictorian Matthew Blood also used literal and metaphorical heights as inspiration in his speech, recalling NASA’s Artemis II mission to the moon in April.

“I don’t know who the first to say, ‘The sky is the limit’ (was), but they sure weren’t very bright,” he joked. “There is no limit to where humanity can go. … We will be at the forefront of these projects. We will be advancing society and building a positive culture. Presently, we are the most influential generation because we will set the precedent of excellence in our communities, countries, the world and eventual interplanetary species.”

After the four co-valedictorian speakers was a fitting musical number by the high school’s chamber choir, “North” by Sleeping At Last. The lyrics about repainting when “our color fades” and “our paint chips away” set the tone for school board member Brad Ehlert’s speech about resilience.

Ehlert began by telling the story of Cory Hanks, a Charleston resident who, while working in a gold mine in Nephi, lost both hands and his sight after he picked up a box of blasting caps that had been sitting in the sun. 

He had been working in the gold mines to pay for his tuition to Stanford University and, despite his accident, went on to attend Stanford, Harvard University, the King’s School of Oratory and Columbia University. He became a lecturer in high schools, colleges, universities and civic halls throughout the United States, Canada, Cuba and the Hawaiian islands. 

Before Hanks died in 1955, he authored his autobiography, “Up From the Hills,” in which he wrote, “We can never turn in our pathway of experience. We must go on.”

“One choice changed Cory Hanks’ life, but the choices after that defined it,” Ehlert said. “He chose to learn and work again. He chose to build again. He chose not to let one moment, even a devastating one, become the final definition of who he was or what his life could become.”

Ehlert then awarded a surprise $5,000 scholarship to a student who embodied Hanks’ tenacity: 19-year-old Crew Baxter, a football and baseball player who recently received an athletic and academic scholarship to the Colorado School of Mines, where he will study civil engineering.

Baxter’s older brother, Kaden, died in a car collision with a drunk driver in 2020. Kaden was 20 at the time. Surrounded by family after the graduation ceremony, Baxter explained that Kaden’s death had completely changed his approach to life.

“It’s pushed me forward in schooling and sports and everything. I feel like I’m living his life through me. I mean, he did civil engineering, too, and he was really a football star and a baseball star,” Baxter said. “Every day, I feel like he’s looking down at me. He’s giving me his energy to go through all this stuff and achieve.”

Another challenge for Baxter throughout his schooling has been his parents’ divorce. He described his father as “abusive.”

“We went through a lot of years of going through the divorce, going through a scheduled visitation and then going through a lot of court systems,” Baxter said. “I lived in an apartment for most of my middle school and elementary school, sharing a room with my mom and my brothers.”

Throughout the challenges, Baxter’s family has been his guiding light.

“The comfort and moral support that we had with each other really helped us grow and blossom,” he said.

Baxter said high school came with its fair share of fun — participating in sports, becoming more sociable and growing into himself — but it felt “amazing” to be acknowledged for the hardships, too.

“Us Baxters, we don’t really like talking about our grief, especially me. I don’t want to feel like I’m given a step up or pity,” he said. “Having the scholarship was being recognized at least, for once. It really salved my heart and soul.”

The message Ehlert left the Class of 2026 with was to persevere, just like Baxter did.

“When you choose a path that isn’t the right fit, do not let that be the end of your story. Learn, repair, stand back up, choose again, because your life will not be built by one perfect decision. It will be built by the choices you kept making after the plan changes,” he said. “You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not defined by the hardest thing that has happened to you. You are the person who still gets to choose what comes next. That is what this valley has been teaching you.”

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The Wasatch Education Foundation on Monday night awarded $465,000 in scholarships to 271 seniors in the Class of 2026, a record amount for the nonprofit organization.

Applause and happy hoots from the senior section were irrepressible at the start of the event. But as the awards turned into a two-hour procession of names, the students fell into a familiar, funny rhythm, letting out a single, collective clap after each name was announced.

Over 100 donors funded the scholarships. They included local families, parent networks, businesses and organizations ranging from Intermountain Health Heber Valley Hospital to the Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office. 

Some brand-new scholarships were awarded this year.

For example, the Joe Witt Future Builders Legacy Scholarship was awarded to five students from the homebuilding course to support their careers in the trades. It was established by Joe Witt’s siblings, Bonnie Witt Vance and Ben Witt, after the homebuilder and volunteer instructor for the course died in an avalanche while snowmobiling in the Snake Creek area in February.

“We have enough in the funds now to do this every year, probably give out five to six (scholarships) … for the rest of our lives,” Bonnie said.

The Summit Pride Foundation also awarded a scholarship at Wasatch High School for the first time. Maghie Ingols-Pennington, president of the high school’s Gay Straight Alliance, was recognized for her support of LGBTQ+ students.

“I’m not part of the LGBTQ community myself, but I love supporting it,” she said. “I just feel like it makes sense to treat everybody equally and give equal opportunities to everyone.”

Ingols-Pennington plans to study political science at the University of Utah, launching her into whatever career lets her travel the most — a diplomat, she hopes.

The scholarship night was especially significant for recipients of We Rise scholarships, which are awarded to first-generation college students. A board of first-generation Wasatch High School alumni launched the program through the nonprofit Wasatch Education Foundation in the spring of 2021. This year, 24 students received We Rise scholarships. 

Among those 24 were Jazmine Ramirez Parks and Alexander Velazquez Bobadilla. 

They were recognized for completing their associate’s degrees through Utah Valley University during high school, and both plan on attending the University of Utah in the fall.

Velazquez Bobadilla will study mechanical engineering. He’s drawn to the creative problem-solving of the profession.

He wrestled as a junior but dropped out of the team to focus on his studies and work, which he does pretty much constantly at Wendy’s and Walmart. 

“I have lots of money saved for college,” he explained. 

Velazquez Bobadilla’s father is a chef, and his mother is a housekeeper.

“They always tell me, ‘Keep pushing. We need to break the cycle,’” he said. “I have kind of a lot of pressure, but I like it because that’s where I do my best.”

Ramirez Parks described her friend as “bubbly” and able to get along with anyone but serious when he needs to be. Velazquez Bobadilla offered her a fist bump in response to the compliment.

Ramirez Parks plans to get her prerequisites for medical school so she can become a surgeon. 

She’s wanted to be in the medical field ever since she watched her childhood hero, Doc McStuffins, of the animated Disney Junior show of the same name, give operations and check-ups to toys. Now, Ramirez Parks is a certified nursing assistant at Heber Valley Assisted Living.

“(My parents) told me that if I find happiness in doing that, and if I … truly enjoy helping people, and it’s not all about the money, to go the route that I want to do, just figure out the rest when it comes,” she said. 

Ramirez Parks said one of her greatest challenges during high school was her parents’ divorce during her sophomore year — something she chose to approach as a stepping stone instead of a stumbling block.

“That just helped me keep pushing for the sake of my mom and myself,” she said.

Velazquez Bobadilla and Ramirez Parks agreed that fitting in was a challenge throughout high school.

“Being from a different culture … sometimes you fit in, but only into a certain group. It always feels like you don’t fit in, and you have to find your way in,” Velazquez Bobadilla said. 

Ramirez Parks added, “My last name is Parks, so yes, everyone thinks I’m American, but I do have a Mexican mom. … It is kind of hard to fit in because everyone’s like, ‘Oh, you’re American. You have a lot of money.’ There’s a whole stereotype. It’s like, ‘No, complete opposite, actually.’”

Ramirez Parks found community in the high school’s Latinos In Action club. As president, she tried to shatter the conception that Latinos In Action is “boring” — for example, by organizing and fundraising a trip to Disneyland for members in March. Despite that, Velazquez Bobadilla didn’t join the club, which Ramirez Parks jokingly gave him a hard time about. 

Kim Danely, the high school’s college success advisor, said a common denominator among first-generation college students is how hard they work, never using academic responsibilities as an excuse not to be involved in service or career advancement opportunities. 

Danley is a first-generation college student herself. She said scholarships were instrumental in her ability to get a bachelor’s degree in conservation biology from Brigham Young University and a master’s degree in environmental management from Yale University.

“(My parents) were very supportive of it, but they had no money to help me, and they didn’t really know how to help me navigate it, either,” she said.

That’s why each student in the We Rise program is assigned a volunteer mentor — whether it be a Wasatch High School alumnus, a trusted adult or older college students — to answer any questions they have about the college experience and help them look for jobs after graduating.

Danley said college — and education in general — can change a student’s life.

“It opens up the world to you and helps you appreciate everything. When I listen to music now, because I minored in music, I see it in the context of the history of music. And when I go on a hike in the forest, I don’t just see green. I see 50 different plant species,” she said. “It helps you connect with people. You can have a conversation with anyone in any field. … And then, I think it gives you an opportunity (to) give back to the community because it gives you a broader vision of the world.”

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Wasatch High School class of 2022 graduate Derek Colon is a year away from completing his master’s degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Utah. His sights are set on a career designing jets or Formula 1 cars.

Just four years ago, he was a 12th grader with no experience or qualifications other than a passion for physics. That all changed thanks to his participation in the high school’s Center for Advanced Professional Studies program, or CAPS.

The program commemorated its 10th anniversary with a luncheon last Friday at the Utah Valley University Wasatch campus, where the program operates. 

The Center for Advanced Professional Studies, a model that began at Blue Valley School District in Overland, Kansas, allows high school juniors and seniors to gain real world experience by working on a project in their field of interest, all while being mentored by professionals in that industry. Organizing the luncheon, for example, was a student-led project.

In Colon’s case, he joined the engineering team, which was working on a project assigned by instructor Dr. Edwin Stevens, a retired interventional neuroradiologist from Midway.

Stevens wanted to create an electronic shoe insert that would notify the wearer when they placed a certain percentage of their body weight on that foot. He came up with the idea after he broke his leg, and his orthopedist instructed him to put only 25% of his body weight on that leg — which is much easier said than done.

The invention is still being refined by this year’s Center for Advanced Professional Studies students. Colon, meanwhile, helped come up with its first iterations.

“The first prototypes were really questionable at best,” Colon said, eliciting a laugh from Stevens. “Our method of attaching to your shoe, we had it so you would tie your shoelaces through it. It was really big, and I bet it would be really annoying to have that on you at all times.”

Nevertheless, by the end of Colon’s senior year, his group had a device that could read the wearer’s body weight.

Colon’s group went on to win regional competitions for career and technical education organizations SkillsUSA and HOSA: Future Health Professionals. 

Colon said the Center for Advanced Professional Studies program taught him the engineering process he uses so often at university.

“You just iterate. That’s the big idea I’ve seen in all my engineering classes,” he said. “You make a device at first, and then it doesn’t do what you want it to do or doesn’t work at all. But then, you can learn from it and then build on it and then make it better.”

Colon is far from the only student who has benefited from the program, as evidenced by the number of alumni present at the luncheon.

Class of 2023 graduate Drew Whimpey participated in Center for Advanced Professional Studies’ Innovate program in his senior year, through which students develop products and businesses. Whimpey said his participation helped him learn how to be a more effective salesman of his videography services.

Thanks to the confidence-building that happened in the Center for Advanced Professional Studies, his business, Drew Whimpey Films, has continued to flourish. Now he’s launching a marketing agency tailored to companies in the construction industry called Bonfire Media.

Whimpey also serves on the advisory board of the center. He said Wasatch High School’s Center for Advanced Professional Studies program is unlike any other in the country for several reasons: the funding, the instructors and, most importantly, the refusal of founders and directors to “settle” with what they already have. 

That can be seen in the Center for Advanced Professional Studies Director Weston Broadbent’s securing of over $500,000 in grant funding from the Utah State Board of Education in February.

The money is being used for new equipment, like broadcasting equipment for student journalists, a computer numerical control machine for manufacturing, a plasma cutter for welding and woodshop and a new Anatomage Table, which simulates 3D models of animals and cadavers that can be digitally dissected. The school district is also purchasing a food truck for culinary students to run and two cars to transport students to and from the Utah Valley University Wasatch campus.

Another recent addition to the program was the education pathway. Before the education program was integrated into the Center for Advanced Professional Studies, student internships were purely observational, explained instructor Kasie Payne. Now, students can actually teach other students across the school district.

Tom Stone, the Heber City mortgage loan officer who came up with the idea of bringing the program to Wasatch High School, hopes it will continues to improve, much like how Colon improves his inventions with new iterations.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Stone said.

Since bringing the center to Wasatch High School, Stone has observed other programs throughout Utah and in Kansas City, St. Louis and Boston. He believes Wasatch High School’s program is the best there is.

Whimpey agreed.

“Because it’s been around for a decade, it gets overlooked, and it’s just kind of normal. That’s how it is in Heber. But this doesn’t exist anywhere else to this level,” he said.

Ryan Starks, the first managing director of the program, noted that it wasn’t always so glamorous. 

“You enjoy the 8,100 square feet of beautiful tech space in the (Utah Valley University Wasatch campus) basement now, but when we found it, it was a room full of dusty boxes and old picture frames,” he recalled. “But we had a vision that we could transform this into something greater, something that could be a benefit for generations to come.”

Starks became involved in the Center for Advanced Professional Studies when he was the executive director of Heber Valley Tourism and Economic Development. Stone roped him in because he was the perfect liaison to the business community, whose mentoring of students was crucial to the program’s success.

Starks went on to become the executive director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, a role he left last June after six years.

“I got to go around the world to Korea, to Japan, to Dubai, Israel, Mexico, Canada, Europe, England, so many places talking about the great State of Utah as an ambassador, as a representative of the state,” he said. “People would often ask, ‘Well, what’s the secret sauce to Utah?’ You can bet your bottom dollar that I talked about Wasatch (Center for Advanced Professional Studies) whenever I could. We have students, we have a community, we have business partners, we have visionary leaders who make amazing things happen.”

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It’s the usual routine on a Thursday afternoon at the 980 South Mill Road intersection. Kids wearing unicorn helmets fly down the sidewalk on pink scooters. A dad pulls a lucky few in a wagon. Twin blonde girls cross the road and pay surrounding traffic no mind, their noses buried in a shared picture book.

These roughly 250 kids have a protector: crossing guard Debbie Carlin, who works the intersection near Old Mill Elementary School and Timpanogos Middle School every weekday morning and afternoon.

Carlin has lived in Heber City with her husband, Adriaan Hager, for 32 years. She became a crossing guard about four years ago, first just looking to volunteer, not realizing it was a paid position.

For Carlin, it was less about the money and more about getting her “kid fix” — her own child had just left for college. Although each student interacts with Carlin for only a minute or so each school day, the repeated, positive interactions have made her beloved among schoolchildren.

“She really likes to smile, and she’s like, ‘Have a good day,’” said fourth grader June Chambers. “She always lifts my spirit when I have a bad day.”

Carlin said each child feels almost like her own.

“There used to be a little kid on a little tricycle. He used to have this little light. And now he’s one of my older kids, Lars, and I talk to him every morning,” she said. “I watched him grow up.”

Although she’s not their mother, Carlin is willing to put her life on the line to protect the kids. 

That became evident on the morning of April 8, when an unidentified motorist attempted to speed through the intersection as Carlin and a group of children prepared to cross the street. Carlin stepped in front of the vehicle, displayed her stop sign and yelled at the motorist to halt — which, thankfully, they did — and for the wide-eyed children to get back.

“We just let them sit there and be shamed,” Carlin recalled. 

She insisted that the incident was commonplace for a school crossing guard. Nevertheless, a parent witnessed her good deed and posted about it on Facebook. 

“I might have looked a little bit more dramatic because it was a huge, lifted truck and I’m a little person,” Carlin rationalized.

Her husband chimed in, “David versus Goliath.”

The post caught the attention of Carlin’s supervisor, Heber City Police Department Sgt. Zac Hendricksen. Much to her protest, he nominated her for the Mayor’s Award, which was bestowed upon her during the April 21 City Council meeting.

“Debbie loves being in the limelight,” Deputy Chief Branden Russell joked as an embarrassed Carlin stood beside him. 

Carlin still insists that she didn’t deserve the award, that any crossing guard would’ve done the same. But her coworker and mentor, Brent North, who has been a crossing guard for 15 years, said he certainly wouldn’t have stepped in front of the vehicle.

“If it’s going to hurt the kids, I might,” he said. “It’s more danger to you if you jump out.”

In more extreme incidents, a crossing guard will whack their stop sign against a vehicle to get the driver’s attention. 

Carlin’s former coworker, Elmer Pays, had dents all over his stop sign before he laid down his arms after 17 years in the trenches. Carlin’s stop sign only has one dent, from when she whacked a car driven by an inattentive driver a couple of years ago.

“(Pays) would get mad. I’m more like, kill people with kindness,” she said. Then, after a moment’s pause: “Well, not really. I get mad. We all get mad, so we yell at them. They can’t hear us. But I really think it’s more for us. It’s like yelling at the TV.”

Hager has become much more conscious of his driving habits since his wife became a crossing guard. 

“It just boils my blood sometimes to hear some of the stories of people not paying attention,” he said.

Some drivers are not only inattentive but also impatient.

“I’ve counted how long it takes. It’s literally 12 seconds in between kids,” Carlin said. “What Brent always says: ‘You can’t fix stupid.’ They just have no common sense.”

Although being a crossing guard can be frustrating or dangerous at times, it’s far from a thankless profession. 

“Everyone says ‘thank you’ all the time. They’re really well-behaved kids,” Carlin said.

The parents are grateful, too, often giving Carlin presents during holidays. Her favorite is a key chain of a tiny crossing guard with its own red and white sign.

While walking home with her third grader, Heber City mother Monica Lopez insisted that crossing guards deserve more recognition.

“I think crossing guards are special people, for sure. Not everybody would do their job,” she said. “They’re underpaid heroes.”

The post Heber City crossing guard who risks life and limb for kids receives Mayor’s Award appeared first on Park Record.

When Timpanogos Middle School Principal Jim Judd asked Sarah Bray’s sixth-grade history students for positive things to say about their teacher, dozens of little hands shot up.

A procession of school district administrators, co-workers and family members had visited Bray’s classroom on April 17 to present her with an oversized cardboard check. Bray was named Timpanogos Middle School’s Teacher of the Year last week as part of the nonprofit Wasatch Education Foundation’s Distinguished Educator awards, which awarded nine teachers across the school district $10,000 each.

Many of Bray’s students talked about how their teacher made learning history bearable. That’s in no small part thanks to Bray’s simulations of events like painting the Sistine Chapel or slowly dying of the Black Death. Next up will be a play version of World War I trench warfare, child soldiers throwing wads of paper at each other from across the room.

Sixth grader Kyla Chevalier offered a different compliment for Bray. She pointed to class clown Kutter Wade and said, “His jokes are funny, but her laugh is more funny.”

Eighth grader Eva Danley focused on Bray’s constant support for her students, even when she was forced to step away from teaching last year to battle breast cancer.

“I remember every single day, she would email us and check in how we were doing and make sure to help us with every single assignment. She was always there for us, even when she wasn’t actually there,” Danley said. “She is, by far, my favorite teacher.”

Bray learned she had breast cancer last January. It was a complete shock — her family had no history of breast cancer, and she’d had a mammogram two months prior that came back clear.

Bray continued teaching even as she underwent a surgery that was ultimately unsuccessful. In mid-March, her doctors advised her to not continue teaching while undergoing chemotherapy.

For Bray, passing the torch to a long-term substitute teacher was one of the hardest parts of her battle with cancer. Teaching had helped take her mind off her diagnosis.

“The kids were so kind and so nice to me, but they don’t treat you like you have cancer. I think sometimes adults want to treat you with kid gloves, and the kids, they don’t do that,” she said.

Bray completed her 16 rounds of chemotherapy at the end of July. Even though she knew she had a surgery coming up, she decided to teach the first three weeks of the 2025-26 school year so she could introduce herself to her students. 

“It was super fun to show the kids my bald head,” she recalled. “I came to school with a wig on at first, and they were like, ‘Wait, you don’t have any hair?’ And so I took my wig off, and they were like, ‘What? No way!’”

Although there was a substitute to take over teaching duties, Bray emailed her students and graded their assignments to maintain relationships with them. After a successful surgery and radiation, Bray returned to teaching full time in November. 

Throughout Bray’s health scare, what kept Bray going was gratitude.

“Sometimes I feel angry, upset about it, but it doesn’t feel good to be in that state all the time. I think I made a mental decision: I’m going to keep living. I’m going to choose to be happy,” she said. “I’ve got a great husband. I’ve got amazing kids. My school community was so kind to me. … I can either move forward being sad and angry all the time, or I can choose to be happy and excited about what I see around me.”

Although she graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelor’s degree in history education in 1999, Bray wasn’t always sure she wanted to be a teacher. She’d done some student teaching at Bountiful High School after graduating and was instantly hit with self-doubt.

“I just didn’t feel like I was connecting on the level that I wanted to,” she said. “Maybe this is something that all teachers struggle with, but you don’t see your impact, really. They’re in your class for an hour, and then they leave, and then they go, and they move on.”

Bray now realizes she could have worked up her confidence and skills as an educator if she’d kept at it. But instead, she stepped away for two decades to raise her four children.

When Bray’s husband lost his job in 2020, it gave Bray the push she needed to jump back into full-time teaching. She started by teaching at Wasatch School District’s online school, Wasatch Learning Academy, before transitioning to Timpanogos Middle School, where she is now in her third year of teaching sixth and eighth grade history full-time.

Being named a Distinguished Educator has reassured Bray that returning to education was the right decision.

“I felt really excited to come to school today. I’ve chatted with all my kids, and I’m like, ‘You guys are the best. I love being here,’” she said. “It very much validates that I’ve made the right decision and this is where I’m supposed to be.”

Bray will be using the $10,000 to travel to Italy with her husband and four kids, celebrating beating cancer while geeking out over historic sites.

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