Save Dixon!

Tonight the Provo City School Board will take a vote that may decide the location for the Dixon Middle School rebuild. I fervently believe that it is in the best interest of our children's education and the health of our city that the School be rebuilt at its current location. I ask the Board to vote to rebuilt DMS at its current location. I desperately want to support the bond campaign and I don't want another expensive delay.

Please consider attending tonight's Board meeting and passing along this information. There will be an opportunity for the public to speak at the meeting tonight. The meeting begins at 7pm and is at the Provo City School District Offices, 280 West 940 North.

A good summary of the arguments for rebuilding Dixon Middle School at its current location is presented at the Save Dixon Middle Blog.

Keep reading if you are interested in my reasoning and perspective:

I am a strong advocate for public education and the well-being of our community, and I see these as closely related issues. My first "elected office" was for the Community Council at Timpanogos Elementary School. I campaigned for the last successful school bond (2014) that passed with over 70% of the voters supporting it. I even recorded a spot with the District voicing my support. I felt blindsided, and I spoke with many neighbors who felt similarly, when the District decided to relocate Provo High for its rebuild, even though no indication had been given that that was even a consideration when the bond was being discussed. I argued hard against the proposed Provo High relocation, but in the end, the Board decided to move it. To this day I am frequently reminded that this was the wrong decision. From the final District cost of rebuilding the school at the new location compared to what it would have been at the old site, to the overall cost to taxpayers (for example, in 2019, when asked why progress on other projects around the City was so slow, Provo City engineers estimated that the City had spent around $15M in road construction costs "SO FAR" because of the school relocation. Remember, Provo City taxpayers are the exact same pool as Provo School District taxpayers), to the news that the extracurricular programs were being cut (the same programs that one Board Member told me could only be continued if they relocate the school), to the school traffic backing all the way out onto Geneva Road.

The Provo High move, and the proposal to move Dixon Middle School, are part of a larger pattern and fulfilling the vision and plan of the Provo School District. This is to consolidate schools into ever-increasing student bodies and move schools out from the center of the City out to the periphery. Take a look at the net results of the last changes to middle schools in Provo.

• Centennial Middle School was built in the mid-1990s. The given justification was the increasing middle school student enrollment in the district.
• Farrer Middle School was closed, less than 10 years later. The reasoning given was that district enrollment didn't justify three middle schools.
• Centennial Middle School, has been expanded over the years, but at its heart is still a school built for 600 students. The lunchroom, for example, has a capacity of 600. The enrollment is now pushing 1200 students and is expected to exceed that number.

In 2019, the District tried to skip the middle step and just move Dixon Middle School from near the center of the City to the outskirts of developed Provo. The bond failed by an almost 2:1 margin. Proponents of the bond tried to blame the public for not supporting education, but remember, the bond 5 years prior passed with over 70% support.

I know many people who voted against the 2019 bond BECAUSE they support education, and they disagree with the direction the District is going to build a couple of mega-schools on the edges of Provo. They understand that schools are primarily funded from our property taxes and that we need all areas of the City to be vibrant and healthy to properly fund our schools and that taking critical, family-supporting infrastructure out of the older, more-urbanized neighborhoods, significantly hinders the prospects of healthy redevelopment and significantly increases the chances that these neighborhoods will be abandoned by families and become blighted.

The most recent School Board elections (with two incumbents defeated) bear out that the public does not want to continue to pursue policies of mega-schools and disinvestment in central Provo. By rethinking the policy of only having two middle schools, we can both have more reasonably sized schools that are more conducive to student well-being, and we can help ensure that all areas of Provo are healthy, attractive, and economically vibrant. The site that the District owns in west Provo is a great site for a middle school...once the area builds up around it and there are more middle school students living around it. In the meantime, we can rebuild a smaller Dixon Middle School that doesn't have to fit all the project growth over the next 30 years.

Before the Board decision to put the relocation of DMS on the 2019 bond proposal, some community advocates and I met with board members to explain why we thought that the school should be rebuilt on-site, to try to persuade them that that was the best decision for both the children and the community, and to warn them that we feel so strongly that we would fight against the bond if the relocation was a part of it. It wasn't a threat, but we didn't want them to be surprised later on. With a 2:1 vote against the bond, we can't claim that our opposition made the difference, but I believe we made a difference. And I really can't take any credit, because I was hardly involved due to my work on the City Council. My time on the Council is over at the end of the year, giving me plenty of time in 2022 to either fight for a bond campaign that I think will improve education in Provo or to fight against a bond that I believe is not in the best interest of our students and community.

I've been quiet in the run-up to this vote today, and not just because so much of my focus is on the issues before the City Council, but because I had heard enough comments from school board members to make me believe that they had learned from the last bond vote and the last school board elections. I still hope that this is the case. I deeply hope that I can support the bond campaign as I did in 2014, but this issue is critical enough that I will fight against it if I believe it will harm our children and harm our community. I ask the Board to vote tonight to rebuild Dixon at its current location and plan to build a third middle school in west Provo when warranted. 

(I apologize if any of my figures are off. I tried to cite sources as I went along. This represents my understanding, and I believe the overall points are correct, even if I inadvertently mixed up some of the details.)