In January, I resigned from the Bright Futures Advisory Committee, which guides the Park City Education Foundation on the Bright Futures program. This decision stemmed from my deep concerns about the foundation’s recent actions and the detrimental impact they will have on the Bright Futures program.
Since 2014, the foundation has been the 501(c)(3) overseeing the Bright Futures program. This program is designed to help first-generation students, an extremely underserved population, get to and graduate from college and has raised over $800,000 annually and has accumulated $1.9 million for future obligations and scholarships. For eight and a half years BF has had a profoundly positive impact on the Park City community. However, the foundation has never actively administered the program. That responsibility has always rested with the Bright Futures founders and staff.
In the past 18 months, the foundation has undergone significant leadership changes, including the choosing of a new president, a 25% board turnover, and the appointment of a neophyte executive director, Ingrid Whitley.
The new leaders have initiated a strategic plan beginning in September 2024 instituted by the Pathway Group, which was also hired to choose the new executive director. None of these new individuals, including the Pathway Group consultant, have been in Park City for even a year or were familiar with the Bright Futures program or the constituents it serves.
We have been told that this strategic plan includes the dissolving the Bright Futures Advisory Committee, of which I had been a member for over a decade. The foundation has assumed day-to-day administration of Bright Futures despite lacking the expertise, staff, and commitment required to serve Bright Futures 170+ students and the mission.
This Bright Futures program demands approximately 100 hours of intensive communication monthly and support to prepare students for college, including preparation for standardized tests and college entrance exams, assistance with financial aid, and intensive mentoring once the students head for college. The current program boasts an 87% graduation rate for first-generation college students, significantly surpassing the national average of 17% for a similar demographic and Park City High School’s overall rate of under 60%.
Refer to the Future of Bright Futures website (www.thefutureofbrightfutures.com) TAB 1, for details on Bright Futures ‘s 10 years of efforts and responsibilities. See TAB 2 for the foundation’s intent to abandon the tenants of the program. TAB 3 contains the bios and resignation letters from Bright Futures founders, staff and donors, including mine. TAB 3 also contains my role in the founding of the program and a history of how we got to this place.
The Park City Education Foundation has said it does not run programs. It intends to shift these critical duties to a new, inexperienced first-generation counselor and an already overburdened Dream Big program teacher. This is unadvisable and will not lead to better outcomes. The foundation wants to lower the standards to get into the program and increase by fivefold the number of students per counselor. They want to lessen the hours of tutoring, test preparation, college application assistance and cut out all together the mentoring once the students head to college.
The core issue is the foundation’s financial and personnel management. According to their 2023 990 form (available on the Future of Bright Futures website, TAB 4, 2024 numbers are not available yet), the reader can see the amounts raised by the foundation as well as those of other similarly tasked foundations and how much the organization spends on its salaries and administrative expenses.
What is not as transparent is the number of students the foundation serves as compared to much larger (Granite, Jordan, Ogden or the Park City Community Foundation) or smaller entities.
The Park City Education Foundation is attempting to add Bright Futures’ substantial financial resources to its general operating fund while planning to curtail the detailed activities and support to their constituents and the students.
In these past 18 months, the Park City School District has seen a marked decrease in the performance rate, attendance and graduation rates for this first generation population. The foundation is attempting with this strategic plan to reroute the Bright Futures funds to these areas of failure, weakening Bright Futures’ effectiveness and still not solving the problems that their poor leadership has caused.
If you want to solve the problems of declining achievement in this underserved population, raise more money specifically for those issues. The foundation has failed in their fundraising efforts and now is requesting district support to reallocate Bright Futures’ to assist with their educational failures.
I have resigned from the committee and rescinded my six-figure legacy gift to the Park City Education Foundation. I have also formally requested that my past donations be directed by the foundation to the Bright Futures scholarship fund to make sure that these funds are used as they were intended by donors, for the students and their college success.
I remain committed to directly supporting Bright Futures students who are impacted by the decision made by the foundation. I urge the community to join me in demanding that the school board, the new Park City High School principal , district superintendent and the state of Utah and attorney general thoroughly audit the foundation’s fundraising, spending, and administrative practices. See TAB 6 for the entities that you can contact to request such actions.
This Bright Futures program represents a decade of my life’s work, and I will not stand by quietly as it is dismantled. Please visit www.thefuturebrightfutures website for documentation and the complete story of Bright Futures’ success.
I am a 47-year resident of the Park City educational community, an initial founder of the Bright Futures program, and a person committed to our first-generation population.
Tommy Tanzer
Park City