This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
After two hours of intense discussion Monday night, the West High School Community Council voted unanimously to ask the Salt Lake City School Board to convene an emergency meeting and repeal the Salt Lake City School District's transfer of physics teacher Dan McGuire to the Horizonte school.
I reported in a column last week that at Horizonte, McGuire is scheduled to teach algebra, geometry, earth sciences and personal finance, even though he has not taught those classes before and feels unqualified in some of the subjects. At the same time, qualified physics teachers are relatively rare.
Last week, district spokesman Jason Olsen told me that McGuire had requested a transfer. Olsen added in a prepared statement that the move is best for McGuire and for West, a claim some parents at the Monday meeting said was dishonest.
Parents hastily organized the West High Alliance as a response to McGuire's transfer and questioned how it was good for West when the school just lost a highly qualified veteran physics teacher who will be replaced by one who is not certified to teach in the school's heralded International Baccalaureate program. And they questioned how it will be good for McGuire by forcing him to teach unfamiliar subjects he is not qualified to teach.
An even more troubling indictment of the district was council chairman Steve Asay's caution to the pro-McGuire parents that it might not be in their best interest to have the community council be their advocate in the matter because of attitudes toward the council by school board members and district staff.
The caution implied that officials inside the district seemed more intent on playing politics and punishing dissidents than acting in the best interest of students.
Asked for a clarification, Asay said he and the council have made waves with the district in the past by objecting to certain policy decisions and taking initiatives at West without first getting permission.
As for the accusation of a punitive culture within the district, it wasn't lost on a number of parents that the co-leaders of West High's Student Improvement Council — McGuire and social studies teacher Kim Wynn — were the most vocal opponents of some policies at West and they both have been involuntarily transferred to other schools. Wynn earlier was transferred to Clayton Middle School.
While McGuire did request a transfer last June in protest of Wynn's transfer, he later rescinded that request. Elaine Tzourtzouklis, executive director of the Salt Lake Teacher Association (SLTA), said that in her 20 years representing teachers in the Salt Lake, Murray and Tooele districts, she has never before seen a case where a teacher was involuntarily transferred after rescinding a voluntary transfer request.
Salt Lake School District officials have been told not to discuss the issue because it is a pending personnel matter. The SLTA has appealed McGuire's transfer to the district superintendent's office.
Free car wash? Motorists driving along 400 West between 300 and 400 South Monday morning got an unexpected car wash courtesy of Salt Lake City maintenance folks.
Because of some busted sprinkler heads in the grassy median, the water sprayed into both lane directions on the street, dousing rush hour cars passing by and watering everything except the grass.
Start your engines: In light of Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker's proposal that motorists be fined if they leave their engines idling for more than two minutes, one racer participating in the Salt Lake City leg of the Tour of Utah bicycle competition earlier this month couldn't help but notice all the police cars idling their engines for about two hours while using their vehicles to block the intersections for the race.
He went up Virginia Avenue and around the route to the Capitol and noticed all the police cars idling. Nearly two hours later upon his return, of the 21 police cars he had counted, 19 were still idling their engines.
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