The following message was sent to all Granite School District employees on Thursday, December 19, at 10 a.m.
Hello All!
I went to bed last night planning a holiday greeting to send out this morning. When the phone rang at 4:00 AM, my thoughts turned another direction.
I left the house much earlier than usual, chipped ice off my windshield, dropped my two elementary kids off at school (the high school kids were long gone already) and drove at a crawl the rest of the way to work. We have two schools with power out, the one with exterior windows we’ll be able to keep open half a day – following a late start – so they don’t have to make it up in April. The other, without exterior windows, we’re getting the word out to close now.
I do want to express my thanks to the transportation fleet, the grounds crews – and all those who don’t usually wield shovels or drive snow plows – who’ve jumped to help provide a warm, safe, supervised, warm-meal day to the children in this community we serve. My thanks absolutely include our teachers who really do the hardest work in our whole organization day in and day out.
As we’ve approached this holiday season, my thoughts have turned to family and Christmases past, including thoughts about my dad who battled cancer, ultimately losing the fight nearly 14 years ago. Paradoxically, he took every opportunity to say that for him, an advantage of cancer was that “it gives the chance to say the things you were too dumb to say before you got sick.” With that counsel, although hopefully not that situation, I encourage all of us (including me), to take the opportunity in the next couple of weeks to initiate repair of bridges in our personal lives and affirmatively let our loved ones know that they are, in fact, our loved ones.
In my own home we celebrate Christmas, so from my home to yours, I wish you a Merry Christmas! I also know many of us approach this season differently and to you, I wish heartfelt Happy Holidays! I’m proud to work with so many great people who dedicate their professional lives, and much of their personal lives, to building our community’s future by serving children directly and indirectly both in our schools and in support of our schools.
I thank all of you!
Martin
Vikkie Smith says
My question would be what JR high are you going to be taking kids from? If it’s Kennedy..then are you going to take 6th graders out of Academy Park and the other elementary schools that have kids that would attend Kennedy as 7th graders? It just seems like it isn’t going to solve any over population problems. Years ago seniors got the choice to stay at Hunter or go to Skyline and I think Cottonwood as those schools didn’t have as big of a population. They did have to get themselves there and back.. but it worked. I knew several kids that went up to Skyline. So if there would be enough kids that would want to go to the less populated high schools, the district should bus them to and from. Then the over populated schools would thin out a bit.
Just an Idea.. but I’ve never been in favor of putting 6th graders into jr high and 9th graders into high school.. I would first promote early graduation with encouragement to attend college or tech schools.
Sup's Staff says
Vikkie Smith » If the proposal is approved by the community and the board, the 9th graders would come from the current feeder schools (Kennedy and Hunter). There is NO proposal to take 6th graders from any of the elementaries. Your comment suggests that this is being looked at as a solution to population problems which is not part of any discussion for this proposal. Thanks for your comment.