Discontent in the district had been brewing for several years as the community felt the former superintendent and board of education kept too much behind closed doors.
Superintendent Lyndsay Huntsman agrees previous leadership made mistakes.
“We had made some missteps in terms of violating our own policy and not holding people accountable,” Huntsman said.
In January, the district installed new leadership. Three new board members who advocated for more transparency were sworn in. Shortly after, the board appointed Huntsman as superintendent. Board President Meredith Reed said the board believed Huntsman had the right skills to turn the district around.
“We had some serious things that needed addressing, but also [we wanted to] bring her experience, her relationships and her connection with the people in the schools, our educators, our students,” Reed said.
Huntsman has worked in the district for 13 years as a teacher, principal and Career and Technical Education director. She said it was no secret what she was taking on when she was appointed.
“The board was very clear, like, we want you to set the expectation, provide support and hold people accountable,” Huntsman said.
Since then, she’s taken a hard look at the decisions and actions that led to the district’s turmoil and determined which policies and practices need to be changed going forward.
Community criticism comes to a head
Community complaints started amping up in March 2024. That’s when former Superintendent Jill Gildea signed an agreement to resolve a federal discrimination investigation that found over 180 incidents of harassment in the district.
Parents expressed disappointment with district leadership and Gildea at the time, saying their plans for next steps were too ambiguous.
As community members began calling for new leadership, incumbent board members Andrew Caplan, Wendy Crossland and Anne Peters withdrew their campaigns for reelection.
In July 2024, community members launched a petition to delay renewing Gildea’s contract, citing a lack of transparency and accountability. The board was also divided on Gildea’s contract. Board members Reed and Nick Hill, now the current board president and vice president, said they hadn’t been involved in performance reviews.
Still, Caplan, Crossland and Peters voted to renew Gildea’s contract.
Despite her renewal, Gildea announced her retirement in September 2024 and accepted a CEO position at a Colorado charter school network in November 2024.
That same month, a parent raised concerns about district leaders' compensation packages, including Chief Operating Officer Michael Tanner’s. Some community members were concerned Gildea had given Tanner a special deal.
Gildea and Tanner have history: they worked together for seven years at Fremont School District in Mundelein, Illinois. Gildea acted as superintendent while Tanner started as the director of business services. Before Gildea left Fremont in 2017, Tanner was promoted to associate superintendent for finance and operations.
When Gildea headed to Park City School District to serve as superintendent, Tanner followed. Park City’s board of education approved Gildea as the new superintendent in May 2018. In March 2019, the school district created the chief operating officer position and offered Tanner the job, making him Gildea’s second in command.
In November 2024, after Gildea had left the district, concerns over Tanner’s compensation package grew louder. Others in the community, including a staff member, alleged Tanner had exhibited potentially criminal behavior during his time at the district.
In response, the district hired two external investigators in December 2024 to look into the allegations. The Utah Attorney General’s Office also opened its own investigation in January 2025 after a referral from Park City and Summit County law enforcement.
The investigations focused on Tanner’s remote work agreement and military service. The district also independently reviewed his special duty contracts and is now implementing policy changes based on the findings.
Remote work and military policies
In July 2024, Gildea sent a memo to the school board, which was first published by the Park Record in November 2024, explaining Tanner had permission to work remotely to accommodate what he claimed was his military reserve duty and a need to care for an aging parent.
But the district investigation found Tanner lied about his service both to investigators and in a July 2024 KPCW interview; he said he was still working as a reservist at the time, but had retired from the military in November 2021. Even so, investigators said the lie was not criminal as Tanner had never used military service as a reason to use paid time off.
In fact, the district and attorney general’s office investigations found no criminal wrongdoing or school district policy violations.
Board president Reed said the district has always followed federal protocol related to military employees. However, it’s now covering its bases and is in the process of adding a military work policy. Among other things, the policy says the district will provide military leave on terms equal to leave granted for things like jury duty and bereavement.
The district is also working on developing a work-from-home policy, something they haven’t had in the past. Huntsman and the board looked to other districts for a model, but found none have policies in place.
Huntsman said that’s because there’s no place for remote work in education.
“It's very clear that that is not allowable in our profession,” she said. “We work with the public, so it's very difficult to justify working remotely when you're interfacing with the public on a daily basis.”
Under Gildea, over 20 employees worked remotely.
Special contract policy
Some in the community have bristled over Tanner’s compensation package, which included a $77,600 special assignment contract for district-level safety and security issues — duties that were already part of the COO's job description.
The board has asked Huntsman to review these types of contracts, which are common. While none, including Tanner’s, showed any policy violations, board Vice President Nick Hill said the current rules need tightening.
“It was overly broad and allowed far too much discretion and frankly, I think at this point we can probably say they got out of hand,” Hill said. “So we're addressing that.”
Huntsman said the policy has been in place for over 10 years. She and the board are considering adopting language from a neighboring school district that spells out which duties qualify for a special assignment contract.
Huntsman said there are a lot of contracts she questions. Special contracts are usually paid at an employee's hourly rate when it’s a district-directed activity or if it’s a student-facing job. For contracts outside of those guidelines, Huntsman said the contracts are meant to be paid at the starting wage established by the district.
“Those types of things I'm starting to scrutinize, like this person isn't with students teaching them. Why are we paying them their hourly rate?” Huntsman said.
There are other situations where employees have multiple special contracts that, combined, require more work than it’s possible to complete in a week. She said many of the contracts, which are reviewed annually, will not be renewed. In other cases, job descriptions may be altered.
Huntsman hopes to have policies regarding working from home, military service and special duty contracts before the board in June.
Threat of litigation
The COO position was eliminated March 31 to reduce overhead costs, causing additional community concern.
That’s because Tanner was given a severance package of almost $176,000; community members said the district should have fired the former COO instead to save taxpayer dollars.
But district leaders told KPCW they were limited in what they could do. The district’s termination policy says employees can only be fired after unsatisfactory performance reviews. Tanner didn’t have any, although district investigators said there might be grounds for firing him based on the false statements he made during the investigation — something district leaders considered.
In the end, it was left to the district’s legal counsel to determine if Tanner could be fired based on this information, but no guidance was made public.
The district may also have been concerned about litigation. Tanner was fired from his position as Associate Superintendent for Finance and Operations at the Fremont School District in Illinois in 2018. He filed an employment discrimination case against the Illinois district in 2019, claiming age-based discrimination, retaliation and breach of contract. He sought backpay, liquidated damages, reinstatement, compensatory damages, punitive damages, costs and attorneys’ fees and won in part.
The district looked into other ways to save taxpayer money. The board wanted to avoid a tax increase for the 2026 fiscal year and Huntsman and Business Administrator Randy Upton delivered; instead of a tax increase, the district plans to draw from its reserves and absorb staff positions.
Looking forward
With Tanner’s position eliminated and new and revamped policies on the way, Huntsman said district leadership is looking to the future.
“I have strong relationships with our employees and our families, and we intend to continue to grow those relationships and rebuild trust with not only internally within our school district, but with the greater Park City community,” she said.
Reed and Hill said the board is also working on relationship building within the board and beyond.
The board has already had two retreats and has two more planned. Hill said the board has also been working with the Park City Education Foundation and Reed said the board plans to restart quarterly meetings with the Summit County and Park City councils.
