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.

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.”

The post Wasatch High School student professional development program celebrates 10 years  appeared first on Park Record.

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.

The post Developer says Wasatch County workforce housing community can’t be built without school district support appeared first on Park Record.

The Wasatch Back is chock full of smart kids.

After reading a recent article in the paper about how the Wasatch County and Park City school districts outperformed the state in the Utah Board of Education’s grades for districts and schools, Jeff Greiner couldn’t help but note a local school that outperformed both districts, as well as its own South Summit district.

That school is Silver Summit Academy, the 97-student, eight-teacher school serving grades 6 through 12 where he happens to be the principal.

While the school doesn’t yet have enough English-learning students to receive a score in the category, it does stand out significantly from the state and surrounding schools. 

About 72% of the institution’s high schoolers test as proficient for language arts, 54% for math and 63% for science. On a state level, those numbers are about 46%, 31% and 35% respectively. 

While it would be arrogant not to mention the school’s low level of poverty — measured in the state’s report at less than 10 students — the scores are high enough to turn heads.

Though Silver Academy is a public school serving public school boundaries, it attracts interested students from elsewhere wanting to see what the school’s about.

“It’s all teachers,” Greiner said. “Our faculty is absolutely dedicated. From the moment we opened our doors, they bought in because we are different. We do some different things here. … We were going to be willing to say, ‘Hey, just because we’ve done this all the time doesn’t mean we need to keep doing it.'”

The school opened in 2017 in response to the Silver Creek Village development as what Breiner described as a “holding measure as that village and that community fills out” so another school can be built.

Initially, he said, the school district considered an online solution.

“I happened to be in that meeting. I said, ‘That’s probably not a good idea,'” he remembered. “We had a very limited budget, and eventually we had a unique space, and I was allowed to do what I could do to make it work.”

He attributed his student’s success in part to some of the out-of-the-box practices at the school. For example, homework may be assigned through the week but it is all due Sunday evening to allow students to manage and schedule their own workloads.

“If you’re a sophomore, junior, senior here ,you can make some choices,” Greiner said. “We like to call it a guarded swimming pool. We like to let them get in there and swim, but we’re always watching.”

On Fridays, teachers can call kids who might need extra help for whatever reason. There aren’t any scheduled classes. On Thursday afternoons, students receive an email letting them know who if any of their teachers has requested they come to their classroom. 

“There will be some students who will get a letter that says, “Hey, you are right where we need you to be. You can work from home on Friday,'” Greiner said. “It’s an immediate sort of reward for the kids that are keeping up with their work, and it also gives us a chance to work correctly one-on-one with students.”

Given the small number of students, Greiner also makes a point of addressing individual needs. If a student wants to take a class that’s not offered, he finds a way for them to do so, whether it be through a teacher learning the required curriculum or a concurrent enrollment class at Snow College. If students are assigned busywork rather than substantive, helpful coursework, they can take it to him, and he can take it to the assigning teacher.

“Doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen,” he said. “If we’re not giving them something that’s challenging and worthwhile to them, I’d rather go skiing, too.”

Looking over the years leading back to the COVID-19 pandemic, Greiner said his students have been on a steady increase. He’s excited to see it continue.

“I think that says more than anything,” he said.

The post Unique methods at Silver Summit Academy yield unique results, and high grades from state appeared first on Park Record.