Granite School Board 4
Our Charge & ResponsibilityStudents will leave us prepared for college, career and life in the 21st century world.Board GoalsIncrease achievement for every studentEnrich and increase parent and community engagement
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Nicole McDermott
(NP)
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Todd William Morrill
(NP)
Why are you running for the Granite School Board? What experience, expertise and insights would you bring to the Board?
How do you plan to address the achievement gap and ensure equitable access to high-quality education for all students in the district? What would you do to better assist underserved students and their parents?
What measures should the School Board take to ensure the mental health and well-being of students and staff in our schools? How would you advocate for these measures?
Utah has new laws to improve school safety, including measures for incident reporting and firearm possession by school staff. How effective do you believe these will be, and what additional actions or funding sources should the School Board consider?
With the new Market Informed Compensation for Teachers law, what challenges do you foresee in fairly identifying teachers for higher pay, and what other strategies could the School Board use to ensure equity and retain top educators?
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I have had the privilege to serve on the Granite School Board for almost 6 years. I ran because, as a teacher in the district, I saw many opportunities for improvement. I want to represent the many diverse voices in our schools. One size does not fit all. We need to work for the success of all our students. As a parent of children currently attending Granite schools, and as a current 25 year veteran public school teacher, I have a unique perspective that I feel is important when making decisions for education.
Granite School District does this better than most districts because Granite has been addressing the issue for a long time. We currently have coaches and programs that identify students who may not normally be on the path to higher education, and then help put them on that path. Our Granite Technical Institute gives opportunities to all our high school students to gain meaningful knowledge and experience that leads to higher education and job opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable to these students. We need to continue to grow these programs and so that it continues to benefit all students.
Granite was the first school board in the state to pass a comprehensive cell phone policy for our schools. This shows our commitment to our children’s mental health and how serious we are about increasing achievement. In addition, I have a continued commitment to advocate for smaller class sizes, more counselors and social workers, and parent resource nights to help address the mental health of our children. When we are better equipped to help our students, teachers are able to focus more on teaching. Taking more off our teachers' plates is important to their mental health. Our employees need to feel supported and heard.
I have studied this topic and know that school safety needs a layered approach. Our community knows our district best. I would advocate that the legislature provide funding for school safety and allow our community to determine what we need most. While I absolutely support additional measures for the safety of our students, we need to see more research to show that all the requirements of this law are effective when it comes to safety. This bill places a huge fiscal burden on all districts, but especially on small rural districts. While we can get creative in fulfilling the requirements, this will require a heavy financial lift for all our schools.
This law still needs to be flushed out thoroughly by the Utah State Board before we can even make plans. There are ideas that have been floated but we need to see if they fit within the parameters yet to be set by the state before we could even entertain them. When ready, I would work closely with our employee groups to make sure that this was used fairly to support staff and students.
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