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.”

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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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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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Russ Watts has owned and operated development company Watts Enterprises in Midway for 25 years. It wasn’t until he and several other contractors in the city performed an internal survey of their subcontractors and builders in 2022 that Watts realized just how many people were commuting in and out of the valley every day. Forty percent of respondents said they commuted because they couldn’t afford Wasatch County’s cost of living.

That survey inspired Watts’ Celebration Workforce Housing community, which aims to build a 142-unit apartment community in Heber City set aside for essential employees, including first responders, hospital staff, city and county employees and teachers.

Watts considers teachers “priority responders.” That’s why he’s prepared to reserve 50 units for Wasatch County School District employees. However, that comes with an ask: that the school district lease some of its property to Watts Development to build 178 parking stalls on. 

The Celebration Workforce Housing community would be located next to Wasatch High School. The project sprang from Watts’ conversations with Addison Hicken, whose family owns a large amount of land near the school.

Hicken had sold property in Heber City to Watts Enterprises before, land on which the developer built 116 condominium units in 2007. Twenty percent of those units were set aside for members of the local workforce and deed-restricted through the Wasatch County Housing Authority, which also covered down payments for the units’ buyers. Some of Hicken’s children bought units on the development, further cementing the relationship between the family and Watts.

As Watts and Hicken discussed affordability in the Heber Valley over a decade later, they came up with an idea for a workforce housing community. In 2022, Hicken donated 8.5 acres near the high school to Watts Enterprise to build just that.

The Celebration Workforce Housing project would build 142 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments on about half of the donated land. Further phases would construct additional housing, the details of which Watts is still working out. Heber City has only approved construction of the first phase at this time.

Half of the units would be priced at market rate. Forty percent would be affordable to those making 65% of the area median income (AMI), which is $109,590 for a family of four in Wasatch County. Ten percent would be affordable to those making 40% AMI, which is $67,440 for a family of four in Wasatch County. 

The community would be deed-restricted through Mountainlands Community Housing Trust.

The project has garnered financial support from the Wasatch Housing Authority, which is investing $750,000.

The Heber City Council has also invested in the project by voting to defer the project’s impact fees — one-time fees on new development — in December. While the agreement still needs to be finalized, Watts requested that about $3.1 million in impact fees be deferred up to 12 years, paid back at a 4% interest rate.

Watts told the Wasatch County School Board on Tuesday that the school district’s participation in a shared parking agreement is also essential for the housing development to work.

Watts has 366 parking stalls planned on his own site, but is looking to install 178 on school district property so he does not have to remove any apartments to accommodate more parking on his land. 

The total 544 parking stalls represents the parking needed for the complete buildout of the Celebration Workforce Housing Community, not just phase one of development.

The parking stalls would be shared by the school district, which would use them during the day, and the Celebration Workforce Housing Community, which would use them in the evening. 

Watts Enterprises would pay for and install the parking spaces, evenly splitting maintenance costs with the school district. Maintenance would include coating, striping and repair as necessary. 

The current school board members had mixed reactions to the proposal. 

School Board President Kim Dickerson wasn’t sure the school district needed additional parking stalls. District Business Administrator Jason Watt said they would most likely be used for events.

Board member Breanne Dedrickson was concerned that an agreement would use “public money to benefit private industry.” Dickerson agreed.

Dedrickson asked what would become of the project if the school board did not enter into the parking agreement.

“We won’t do the project. We’ll just tell the Hicken family, ‘Let’s walk away.’ … The Hickens would sell the property,” Watts said. “You’re a critical component. The city is critical. All the parties are critical. It just doesn’t pencil without (their support).”

The first 142 apartments will cost $43 million. Watts Enterprises anticipates a return on investment of about 6 to 7%.

Board member Brad Ehlert, who lives in a community developed by Watts Enterprises and said he loves it, wasn’t sure school district employees would jump on the opportunity. He said some family members had been offered a similar opportunity in Wasatch County but refused because they wanted to own rather than rent. They ended up moving away to fulfill their dream.

“Whether right or wrong, I think a lot of people believe part of the American Dream is owning a home,” Ehlert said.

However, Weston Broadbent, the district’s Career and Technical Education director, believed school district employees would jump on the opportunity. 

“I could go to any teacher right now that’s renting and say, ‘I have a place next to the high school for 1,500 bucks,’ and they would be all in,’” Broadbent said.

Broadbent, who worked as a real estate agent for two decades, is Watts’ neighbor and was Watts’ first contact in the school district about the project.

Watts will finalize a proposed agreement with school district employees before returning to the school board for a vote.

Watt expects the Celebration Workforce Housing community to break ground in 18 to 24 months.

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Park City High School, McPolin Elementary, Treasure Mountain Junior High and Ecker Hill Middle School commenced classes on Thursday morning, August 24, 2017. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

Link to full gallery here: https://parkrecordphoto.smugmug.com/PHOTOS-First-Day-of-School/

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Children and their parents convened at the PC MARC Friday morning, May 19, 2017, for a bike-to-school event. Attendees were treated to free bike helmets, bike bells and stickers. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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Fourth and fifth-graders at Jeremy Ranch Elementary School have been learning to inline skate with instructors from the US Speed Skating team over the past week. Each grade has carved out time everyday to learn a little bit more about the fun activity. (Tanzi Propst/ Park Record)

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The 3rd, 4th and 5th-graders of Parley’s Park Elementary School performed “The Lion King, Jr.” for classmates and family members Wednesday afternoon, May 10, 2017. The students sang, danced and dressed in full-costume with face paint. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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The 11th annual Park Record Spelling Bee was held at the Egyptian Theatre Tuesday evening, March 7, 2017, featuring competitions for 2nd and 3rd graders as well as 4th-8th graders. The 4th-8th grade bee will be sending its winner, two-time champion Melinda Buhlman, to Washington, D.C. in May to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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