Tamara Prewitt, who’s making a run at a seat on the Wasatch County School District Board of Education as a write-in candidate, has been a resident of Heber City since 2016. She works as a vice president of marketing for a Fortune 500 software company.
She says she got the idea to run for a seat on the board from a community member who saw posts she made on social media.
Prewitt says the board’s recent decision to take out $150 million in debt to pay for a new high school was overreach, and she’d offer more representation of taxpayers’ interests.
“I believe that while we're working towards building more facilities for our students, we're sacrificing our middle and retirees who will end up with higher tax bills, and they're already under a lot of pressure,” Prewitt says. “So, it doesn't feel like a really good time to pass the largest single bond that Wasatch County's ever taken on without voter approval. So, my candidacy is more about transparency and about representing all the community and not just, you know, the student community.”
She says her philosophy is that a school’s role should be limited to learning core subjects. She says she’d like to give parents a larger share of the power the school district currently has to make decisions on sensitive topics.
“The definition of sensitive materials is obviously different for different people,” she says. “My desire is to have more transparency. For example, there should be a website, or available on the school district's website, the opportunity to see a catalog of all the books that are available to kids by what grade in what schools. Right now, I think the major problem is not whether it is or isn't sensitive, it's the question of whether there's something in there we don't know about.”
Prewitt moved to Heber City in 2016. Before Utah, she lived in California and Chicago. She does not have children in the school district.
She’s vying for the Heber South District seat, which Board Vice President Tyler Bluth currently holds.
Prewitt invites people to contact her on her campaign Facebook page, Tamara Prewitt for Wasatch County School Board.
