Park City district adds art teachers and social workers in schools

Park City School District is replacing Jeremy Ranch Elementary’s parent-led volunteer art model with four licensed art teachers and two new social workers, a staffing shift that puts a trained arts instructor in each elementary school and a full-time social worker at every campus. For the roughly 402 students at Jeremy Ranch, the change ends a system that depended on volunteer help and moves art instruction into the district’s regular staffing plan.

Superintendent Lyndsay Huntsman said the district wants the visual arts program on its own budget instead of relying on the Park City Education Foundation to fund pieces of it in perpetuity. The district will keep its partnership with the Kimball Art Center, but the elementary schools will no longer rely on a patchwork of volunteers to fill the role that now belongs to licensed teachers at Jeremy Ranch, McPolin, Parley’s Park and Trailside.

The social work change is just as significant. Until now, two social workers split time across the district’s four elementary schools, a model Huntsman said could leave a student waiting if a crisis arose while the worker was in another building. Under the new plan, every one of Park City’s six schools, including Ecker Hill Middle School and Park City High School, will have a full-time social worker on campus each day.

That matters for parents as much as for students. More immediate counseling support can shorten response times for emotional, behavioral and family problems, while a dedicated art teacher can make instruction more consistent across classrooms instead of dependent on volunteer schedules and experience levels.

The staffing changes land inside a budget framework that is still tight by district standards. Park City School District adopted a $79 million fiscal year 2027 budget on June 17, and officials said it does not include a tax increase. In a May 20 presentation, business administrator Randy Upton described the tentative FY27 budget as “almost $79 million,” about $44 million lower than the previous year, and said the district identified $2.5 million in cost-saving options to make the plan work. Utah increased the weighted pupil unit by more than 4%, and the district expects $4,870 per student through income and property tax funding.

Huntsman, who has worked in Park City schools for 13 years and has more than 20 years of experience in Utah education, has framed the shift as part of keeping student supports intact while being fiscally disciplined. The district’s arts profile already runs deep, with the Wasatch Back Student Art Show at the Kimball Art Center featuring about 1,200 student works this spring. This staffing move makes that support more durable, and more visible, in the daily life of Park City schools.